House-mates

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

IN MEMORY OF
MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER

HOUSE-MATES

BY

J. D. BERESFORD

AUTHOR OF

"THE WONDER," "THE EARLY HISTORY OF JACOB STAHL,'
"THESE LYNNEKERS," ETC.

"... a ben is only an egg's way of making another egg. . . . Why the
fowl should be considered more alive than the egg, and why it should be said that
the hen lays the egg, and not that the egg lays the hen, these are questions which
are beyond the power of philosophic explanations, but are, perhaps, most answerable
by considering the conceit of man. . . ." — "Life and Habit," by Samuel Butter.

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS
BOOK ONE: THE EGG

CHAPTER PAGE

I. LITTLE MILTON 9

II. HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 36

III. GLADYS 59

BOOK TWO: THE INCUBATOR

IV. ON THE GROUND FLOOR 101

V. THE REST OF THE HOUSE no

VI. THE NIGHT OF THE Row 123

VII. MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 140

VIII. PROGRESS 162

IX. THE Two AUSTRALIANS 185

X. JUDITH 207

XL POOR OLD MEARES 254

XII. ROSE WHITING , 265

XIII. AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 284

XIV. THE LOOSE ENDS 312

2039153

BOOK ONE
THE EGG

HOUSE-MATES

BOOK ONE: THE EGG

I
LITTLE MILTON

1 (

WE are puzzled by miracles because we watch them
from the outside. From that point of view we get
an effect of amazing change. Ten minutes ago this slightly
damp but apparently complete chicken was seen as a rather
dirty egg, that might have been regarded suspiciously from
a breakfast standpoint, but was with the one exception of
colour precisely like any other egg to be broken on the
side of a basin and yield the familiar vision of an apricot
wobbling in a mess of thin but sticky jelly. Not that it
matters in this connexion just what part expectation plays
in our attitude to the miracle. The metamorphosis of a
smooth still egg that might be made of papier-mache into
a differentiated entity full of passionate activities and de-
sires is not less a miracle because it happens every time,
or because we have become accustomed confidently to
expect chickens from eggs. For just so long as we watch
the transfiguration from the outside, the thing remains a
miracle even though the failure of an egg to hatch is be-
come the surprise and disappointment.

I want to get this right because certain acquaintances of
mine once persisted in regarding me as an egg that had
wonderfully and unforgiveably turned into a chicken. They
looked upon me with suspicion and distrust, not so much

9

10 HOUSE-MATES

because they objected to my being what I was, as be-
cause they could not understand the change. In this case,
their expectation and sense of consequence had been
shocked, one curious effect of which was that they were
everlastingly expecting me to become again an egg. (The
analogy fails there, indicating, I think, the part played by
expectation in our attitude towards the miracle.) But the
important point is that they watched the transformation
from outside.

Not that I wish to imply any esoteric advantage is gained
by my own view-point. I cannot boast that I have seen my
own life from the inside. Looking back, the thought of my
experience appears almost purely objective. And I dis-
tinctly remember at least one occasion on which the realised
change in myself came as a disconcerting surprise. It hap-
pened that I was called upon to repeat precisely an opera-
tion I had performed many years before. Parkinson had
had a fire in his house at Copsfield — my first job in private
practice — and as I had lost the original detail drawings,
I had to re-design a gable end from the particulars on
the one-eighth scale tracings that Parkinson had kept. And
I could not do it. In those years I had become a chicken,
and I could not conscientiously repeat the operations of
the egg. Not only had my attitude changed towards de-
sign in architecture, but my draughtsmanship, also, had
been so fundamentally affected that my hand refused to
copy the weak curves of that old elevation. I sacrificed
my artistic conscience and handed over the drawing to my
assistant; but I sat idle for nearly half-an-hour, pondering
the miracle.

Those familiar tracings of mine recalled very vividly
the man I was when I first went to Keppel Street; and I
could follow that man of twenty-eight steadily back into
his past, back to the first faint visions of remembered things,
without a break. The sequence of his life was one of
expected development; there was no breaking of shells,
no emergence of a hungry bird on independent legs. And
for one moment I, too, regarded the change in myself as

LITTLE MILTON 11

a miracle; as a sudden transformation from the inert to
the active. I stood outside and compared and wondered,
just as Geddes or Kemplay might have done; even, per-
haps, with a little uncertainty as to whether I might not
eventually revert in some ways to the characteristics of
the Wilfred Hornby who timidly enquired for rooms at the
door of 73 Keppel Street in the autumn of 1905.

And now that I want so much for a time to find dis-
traction from the horror of recent events, I have decided
to attempt some account of my experience — just for my
own satisfaction and, perhaps, as a sort of note for future
reference. It will amuse me to plunge back into the past
and follow again the development that was taking place
when Fate casually and yet with an air of fastidious pre-
cision popped me into the incubator of 73 Keppel Street.
(Good Lord, what a house that was!) And to do that I
must, to some extent, trace the steady process that was
going on underneath the neat shell which any friend of my
earlier period would unhesitatingly have declared to repre-
sent the actual Wilfred Hornby. I must search the uncer-
tain diary of my memory for any indications of growth
that were marked at the time by the little glimmer of
recording consciousness which seems at the last analysis to
be the thing I recognise as my personality.

What lies still behind that, what inspires and forms
it, I cannot pretend to guess. Yet that inspiring, formative
impulse surely plays the most essential part in the apparent
miracle. But the history of my hatching, so far as I can
trace it, is written in my consciousness. I admit that I am
quite unable to explain the impulse to germination. So far
the miracle remains. But I can, at least, account, ob-
jectively, for the emergence of the chicken; the phenom-
enon that seemed so incredible to some of my friends.

ii

My first great experience came to me when I was eight
and a half years old.

12 HOUSE-MATES

My father was a country parson and I was an only child.
Until 1 was eight I was petted and spoiled at home by
my father and mother and the too indulgent governess who
undertook my early education. But in the spring of 1885
I was sent to a boarding school in the cathedral town of
Medboro', some nine miles away from home. I was badly
bullied during my first few terms at that dame's school.
When I went there I was a rather prim, fair-haired molly-
coddle, with no conceptions of school-boy honour; weakly
resentful of the brutal treatment I received from my school-
fellows— the oldest of them was barely thirteen — but with-
out the confidence or, indeed, the temper to defend my-
self in any other way than by a whimpering, or at most,
peevish, expostulation. No wonder that I was bullied. I
remember that in my second, autumn, term, I was once
tied to a tree in the playground and pelted with "conks,"
which is short for conquerors, otherwise chestnuts.

It was natural enough that I should hate that school
during my first term, even if I had not been bullied. The
differences between school and home were incalculable.
The head-mistress was, I believe, a kind-hearted creature
and ready to make allowances for such a tender-skinned
product as myself, newly unwrapped and suddenly exposed
to all the jostlings of school-life ; but, to her, I was only
one little boy among eighteen other little boys, superfi-
cially much alike — and up till then I had been not "only
one," but the one and only boy.

I do not, now, remember the emotions of joy and ex-
pectancy that must have thrilled me at the prospect of
going home for my first summer holiday. Those emotions
must have been very intense, but they are confused in
my mind with the emotions I afterwards experienced on
so many other similar occasions. The memory that re-
mains is of the experience that was undoubtedly an out-
come of my long and ardent anticipations.

My father and mother drove in from Little Milton
to fetch me home, so that my relief from slavery must
have been more than an hour old when we arrived at the

LITTLE MILTON 13

Vicarage, and my former relations with what I regarded as
my real and true life firmly re-established. Yet I remem-
ber nothing whatever of the meeting with my father and
mother, nor of the details of the drive home. The whole
of the facts are focussed for me by my sight of the
house as we came slowly up the drive, through the avenue
of rhododendrons.

The drawing-room end of the Vicarage was covered with
a dark green trellis of woodwork to give a ladder for the
tendrilled hands of the purple clematis, which with that aid
had climbed up between the two French windows of the
ground floor, spread itself across the width of the ele-
vation, and now displayed its vigour in a decoration of
leaf and flower right up to and, in places, beyond the eaves
gutter of the lichened slate roof.

And the sight of that rich colour, outlining the beauty
of form that was so sharply picked out by the direct
light of the high sun, stirred me for a moment to a higher
consciousness of being. I hovered for an instant, with a
keen sense of expectation, on the edge of some amazing
adventure. It was as if I had discovered some pin-prick
in the world of my reality, a tiny hole that let in the daz-
zling light of a richer, infinitely more beautiful world be-
yond. It seemed to me that if I could but hold myself
intensely still I might peep through the curtain of appear-
ances and catch one glimpse of something indefinable that
was the fountain of all ecstasy.

I had no words, nor perhaps ideas, then, for that sudden
emotion of happiness ; I am unable, rtow, after many repeti-
tions of it, in diverse forms, to express what is in my own
mind regarding them; but I know that that experience is
my first vivid memory of existence and that nothing could
extinguish it.

And it was broken by my father's voice, saying with a
familiar accustomed cheerfulness, "Ah! well; here we are
at last."

At least I presume that was what he actually said on
that occasion — he always did say it.

14. HOUSE-MATES

After tea I went out again into the garden, to stare at
the clematis on that south wall; and I admired immensely
what I should, now, call the design of it, which had, in
effect, the feeling of a particularly brilliant cretonne. But
there was no return of ecstasy; no peephole; nothing
opened. '

in

Other instances occur to me, now, of the same sudden
emotion of happiness, combined with — or should it be, aris-
ing from ? — a sense of some amazing comprehension. Some-
times that state of rapture followed a dream, apparently
meaningless when considered in relation to the common
affairs of life, but, to me, charged with a mysterious sig-
nificance that endured, gradually weakening, in some cases
for years. One such dream that still remains in my mind
as a transcendental experience, concerned the slaughter of
a lamb, an elephant and a little white bull. They were led
on, each by its attendant, across the space of a great arena,
on one side of which I stood alone, while on the other
an incalculable crowd of vaguely realised spectators were
massed along the tiers of a grand stand that must have
been built on the face of a mountain. In my dream I knew
that the solemn procession of animals, led to formal sacri-
fice, was made in order that I might learn to die without
hesitation or regret; and for many years after I cherished
the thought of some old dignity of mine that had glorified
another life lived in the deeps of history.

I reached my rapture in many ways; along the music
of the organ in Medboro' Cathedral; by a glimpse of the
cathedral pinnacles faintly lit by the winter sun and pricking
up through a lake of mist that drowned the flooded meadows
by the river; by a combination of magical green lights,
when I stood in a summer wood of young beeches and
gazed up towards the brightness of the unseen day; and
once, I remember, by the smell and colour and touch of a
great Gloire-de-Dijon rose that had flowered just at the

LITTLE MILTON 15

level of my face on the wall of my father's study. I kissed
the velvet of the deep crimson petals, and for a moment
I seemed to understand the secret joy of a flower's open-
ing to life.

But I am not going to write the story of my common-
place youth. Those transitory flashes of ecstasy were few
enough, and did not perceptibly influence the normal course
of my thought, which was not more touched by imagina-
tion than the thought of the average boy. I never men-
tioned those moments of mine to any one, not even to my
mother. They were private, delightful experiences, pecu-
liar, as I then believed, to myself, and I did not care to
confess my peculiarity. When I grew older I drifted into
a name for them. I called my state, clumsily, "being exalte"
— the English word "exalted" meant something quite other
to me; it was a Bible word, and all Bible words carried
with them some atmosphere of tedium, some association
of class-work, or Sunday-school, or dreary hours in the
arid solemnity of my father's church.

I see that I am getting my proportions all wrong. In my
endeavour to trace some signs of the change that was going
on underneath the shell I have, as it were, turned my egg
inside out and exhibited the germinal vesicle under a mi-
croscope. (This metaphor of the egg is growing tedious
and too elaborate.) And yet I suppose it is impossible for
me to show the Wilfred Hornby, assumed by my relations,
friends and acquaintances. Incidentally, I wonder whether
any two of them made precisely the same assumptions?
They would, however, have agreed upon certain obvious
characteristics, and when I come to consider that "lowest
common measure" of myself I can get no further than the
conclusion that I was absurdly mediocre.

When I went to Oakstone at the age of twelve, I was
put in the lower second, and when I left, five years later,
I was in the upper fifth with the prospect, if I stayed on
at the school, of a move up to the lower sixth and the
dignity of becoming a prefect. I occupied a respected place
in the first game at cricket, I was regarded as a certainty

16 HOUSE-MATES

for the eleven next year, and I got my colours for "Rugby"
in the last match of the Easter term. I had a bosom friend
whom I have never seen since I left school, and I did not
achieve the distinction of being either remarkably popular
or unpopular. Then, too, in appearance I am neither fair
nor dark; and good-looking enough to escape any sort of
comment.

But all these details are without any kind of value. They
are just such foolish particulars as a friend may give you
when he is asked to describe some one he has met; some
one whom, perhaps, you think you know yourself. Such
descriptions are a weariness, although they do uphold my
point with regard to seeing people from the outside. Until
I went to Keppel Street, I should have given some such
account of any casual acquaintance.

The real test for my mediocrity must be applied to the
life I lived inside my shell; and, although I still have a
doubt whether my "moments" may not constitute a weak
claim to distinction, I can find no other grounds for the
boast that I was not as other boys. This modesty, how-
ever, is retrospective. I am looking back with a cold, de-
tached criticism; seeing myself with that uninspired accu-
racy of knowledge which we cannot bring to the study
of any other human being. It is a knowledge that gives a
curious flatness to the image evoked. The romantic possi-
bilities of another person's inner life are eliminated. I fail
to find, now, any delightful potentialities in the man I was.
And yet I am conscious of them in myself as I write, and
at any moment in my past the same consciousness was
present ; ready to flare up full of zest and confidence at the
least provocation.

As a boy I certainly regarded the religious emotions
that first began to shake me when I was coming through
the crisis of puberty, as an intensity peculiar to myself.
Many boys suffer those emotions in one form and another,
but few of them confess their experience at the time.
Shame and spiritual pride are common impediments to

LITTLE MILTON 17

speech, I suppose, but I do not find either very clearly
marked in my own case.

My first serious attack developed quite unexpectedly
when I was fifteen.

I was home for the summer holidays, and the incident
that apparently started my fit was a conversation with my
father.

He was a tall, handsome man, clean-shaven except for
rather bushy grey side-whiskers ; and he had a manner well
adapted to confirm the general impression of a scholar who
had settled down to the ease of a University living. He was,
indeed, a very sound classic, and his qualifications ke^pt him
always provided with the two pupils whose fees enabled
him to keep me at Oakstone. He had no scruples about
coaching the sons of other men, but he had a queer diffi-
dence concerning his ability to educate his own son.

And it was this subject which led him on, that afternoon,
to talk with a most unusual confidence of his hopes for
me. He had taken me over to tea at a friend's house some
three miles away, across the river, and we had a delightful
walk home through the meadows. It was a particularly
serene evening in late August, and we had the country
to ourselves. No corn was ever grown in that wide stretch
of low pasture — it was too subject to winter floods and all
the life of the neighbourhood had been drawn away to the
arable of the higher lands, where the harvest was in full
swing. I have a strong impression, now, of the black green
of the water under the shadow of the hanging woods on
the farther side of the river, and I think that, when my
father began so unexpectedly to give me his confidence, my
thoughts were at first somewhat distracted by considerations
of a likely place for chub.

He opened familiarly enough with some reference to the
peace of the evening, and some phrase he found — it was, I
think, "otia liberrima" — bored me by recalling the associa-
tion of the schoolroom. I always regarded him more as
a schoolmaster than a father; and I suppose nothing could
ever have cured him of his habit of Latin quotation — prin-

18 HOUSE-MATES

cipally Horace. And when he became a little reminiscent
and touched on the dreams of his own youth, I was still
sheepish and self-conscious. I was quite unable to think
of my father as a fellow pilgrim; his calling and age— he
must have been about fifty-five at that time — ranged him
too definitely with the pedagogues, with those mechanical,
infallible beings who inspired respect but could never be
imagined as asking for sympathy.

My father concluded that wistful survey of his drowned
ambitions with a slightly whimsical twirl of his Malacca
cane and the inevitable tag of "Pulvis et umbra sumus." I
came in happily, sure of my ground for once, with a re-
flective "Quo pius jEneas."

My father was obviously pleased. "Ah! magnificent fel-
low, Horace," he said, "one can take him anywhere. I'm
glad to find you're already beginning to appreciate him, my
boy. But" — and he sighed with a sort of spacious reflective-
ness— "I don't know that I particularly want you to go
into the church."

That suggestion instantly caught my attention. My
mother had no ambition for me other than the taking
of Holy Orders, and often wearied me with her well-meant
advice on the subject. Her chief argument was that the
Church, as a profession, was so "safe" ; her regard being for
my spiritual and not my worldly protection. She had had a
brother who had gone very wild, and she was the more
anxious to protect me from similar perils of the soul.

"Don't you, pater?" I said eagerly. "I thought . . .
mater has always said . . ."

"Not unless you have an urgent call," he returned, shift-
ing his ground a little. "In that case, of course, I should be
the last person in the world to stand in your way. And
your dear mother, as you say ... No, no, all I meant was
I don't want you to drift into orders as the easiest
leans to a profession— if, as I say, you have no particular
bias. I myself . . ." But he apparently thought it wiser
.o avoid that confession, for he pulled himself up and went

LITTLE MILTON 19

on : "However, I daresay you hardly know your own mind
yet. Time enough in a couple of years. . . ."

"I think I should rather like to be an architect, pater,"
I suggested, timidly. This was the first time I had given
utterance to that ambition, but it had been my secret desire
for two years. I had a natural gift for drawing and the
subjects I selected had always been architectural. I believe
that I recognised, subconsciously, even as a boy, that the
wider powers of the artist were denied to me. I was too
Conscientious, or had not enough imagination, to attempt
landscape. But I put out my suggestion with considerable
shyness and hesitation. I could not, in those days, avoid
the feeling that any such proposition of mine must inevitably
be, for some esoteric reason, puerile and foolish.

"Ah!" remarked my father as if he were sampling the
quality of a wine, and then added after a moment's con-
sideration, "Well, well, it's a very fine profession."

I was encouraged to enlarge on my proposition, and it
was not cunning or dishonesty on my part that induced
me to speak almost exclusively of ecclesiastical architec-
ture as the object of my dreams. I had been brought up
under the shadow of a church, and there were some really
fine bits of work in our church at Little Milton — the flam-
boyant tracery of the three-light west window is illustrated
in all the text books of English Gothic.

My father listened to my boyish enthusiasms with evi-
dent pleasure, but his thought must have been engaged
with the possibilities of my diances of livelihood, for when
he answered me, he began to speak of the difficulties of
ways and means. "So few churches are built, nowadays,"
was one of his objections, a remark that shows how deeply
he had sunk under the influences of his provincial sur-
roundings. He had forgotten the growth of cities, and
was studying the problem from his knowledge of our own
neighbourhood in which there had been no new church
built within living memory. "Restoration, of course," he
put in, continuing his local test, and he brightened up a
little with a comment on Truro Cathedral.

20 HOUSE-MATES

"Of course, I needn't do only churches," I reminded him.

"No, no, of course not," he said, and went on to tell
me that he had been at King's with Sidney Baxter, of
Heaton & Baxter, the well-known ecclesiastical architects
in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

We had quite decided my future by the time we came
to the bridge over the lock, and we stood there for a few
minutes, more nearly understanding one another than we
had ever done before. The sun was setting blood red,
and the slender leaves of a willow on the further bank
traced a graceful pattern in dead black against the dying
splendour of that indented circle of fire. (Years after-
wards I got rather a good design for a wall-paper out of
that memory.)

Perhaps my father had a "moment" just then, and found
in his visions for me some vicarious satisfaction for his
own failure. I remember that he came out with "usque
ego postera Crescam laude recens," which could only have
been induced by the thought of some very magnificent
achievement. I wonder if I should have got nearer to
him if he had not worn that wide-awake and frock coat and
"all-round" collar? I suppose not. We have often bathed
together, and even in the water one would have known
him for a parson. It was not only his whiskers that
stamped him; there was something bland and- a little
feminine in his face, something that was yet not in con-
tradiction to his height and the square breadth of his fine
shoulders.

No doubt I was a little stirred emotionally by that new
intercourse with my father, and by the promised effect of
what seemed to be the successful result of my argument
for architecture as a profession. But the religious fervour
which first attacked me that same evening and continued
with slowly abating fury for nearly a week, was due almost
entirely to my sense of relief, and to the gratitude it en-
gendered. Subconsciously I had been aware of my future
as the entrance to servitude. I had hardly believed it
possible that I could escape that "sacred calling" of my

LITTLE MILTON 21

mother's ambition, a calling that in my mind was asso-
ciated with an endless barrier of self-repression and re-
strictions. "Duty" figured so overwhelmingly in her pic-
ture of my career, and it was a word that had come to
stand as a synonym for all the restraints of school life. I
had to become my own schoolmaster and live in a per-
petual pupilage to the teachings of the church as expounded
and practised by myself. Indeed my mother nearly al-
ways referred to life as a school. It is true that I regarded
the reward of Paradise as eminently desirable if only
as an escape from the horrid alternative of Eternal Pun-
ishment that we conscientiously accepted in our evangel-
ically-minded household.

And that, too, had its influence in evoking the strenuous
resolves of the period that immediately followed the pros-
pect of release. I was suddenly confronted with a new
responsibility that I must shoulder for myself. A clergy-
man was holy, was "saved" by hypothesis. It was to me
incredible that a clergyman should not go to Heaven. If
you went into the Church, you had to be good, was the
way I argued. The schoolmaster was always with you.
But a mere, secular architect had to choose his own path
to Heaven. I set about choosing mine at once.

Yet I do not wish to convey the impression that my
little spell of religious emotion was deliberately induced.
It was primarily evoked by my sense of relief, and it was
to that extent at least spontaneous. Only the expression
of it was necessarily deliberate. I had not many sins to
recant but I made the most of those I had.

I made vows of unselfishness, for example, of a more
willing obedience to my parents and masters; and of a
greater devotion and attention during prayers and church-
service. I had not, then, been confirmed, but I was being
tentatively prepared for that ceremony and I decided to
fix my mind on my final acceptance into the church with
a great seriousness. But the true characteristic of my con-
version was associated with those sexual yearnings which
had just begun to find queer forms of expression. I

22 HOUSE-MATES

had one or two drawings in my pocket copied from the
illustrations of a smuggled copy of "Ally Sloper" which
had been privately cherished for a couple of days and
then burnt in the kitchen garden under dread of discovery.
These drawings would not have shocked the ordinary con-
ventional mind. The worst of them presented a chubby-
legged young woman in a short skirt, who boasted a turnip-
shaped torso not too shamelessly decollete. But to me she
represented some mysterious, alluring, quite incompre-
hensible sin. She was the emblem of immoral, irresponsible
femininity. If I had met her in the flesh in the vicarage
garden, I should certainly have fled from her in horror;
but the contemplation of her image, very carefully copied
on a sheet of my mother's writing paper, had upon me the
effect of enjoying a furtive, delightful wickedness. I burnt
her with less successful emblems in another specially con-
structed bonfire, and added to the pile of copy of Eugene
Sue's "Mysteries of Paris," purloined from my father's
study. The book had not interested me ; indeed, ( I had only
read the first few pages ; but it had an air of being definitely
profane and prohibited, and I had sometimes crept up to
my own room just to touch it where it lay, carefully con-
cealed, I hoped, under a pile of winter vests in my bottom
drawer. The very touch of the book gave me the sense
of an ecstatic surrender to the delicious wiles of the devil.

Yet my vows and renunciation of the sinful lusts of the
flesh were made without effort. They represented my will-
ing offerings in the cause of righteousness, inasmuch as
my mood did not arise from any conviction of sin, but
from a sudden urgent desire to become what I called simply
and effectively "good." It is true that later manifestations
were more complex; and some of them more enduring.
One that followed a definite lapse from virtue— I was about
twenty-five at that time— lasted for several weeks. But
the general effects of them, upon myself, were always much
alike. I had a feeling of being singled out from the mass
of my fellows; I experienced an uplifting and serenity
of mind ; a consciousness of immediate satisfaction as a re-

LITTLE MILTON 23

ward for the noble resolutions that I was making. It seems,
indeed, as if the whole manifestation arose from an egotism
that might in extreme cases develop into megalomania.
Not that I advance this statement as in any sense an ex-
planation of the phenomena. I must leave that to some
inspired psychologist of the future. I note it here simply
because these religious fits of mine were an essential part of
my make-up; and what I have referred to as my emer-
gence from the shell seems very closely related to them.
And I must insist once again that I was a very ordinary
boy.

IV

Another piece of evidence which confirms that obstinate
affirmation, is to be found in the manner of my first serious
love-affair.

I had earlier fallen temporarily under the glamour of
various distant influences. When I was eleven I was des-
perately in love for some hours with a red-haired little
girl I met at a Christmas party. Three years later I had
a shy, adoring passion for the wife of our Squire — she
was then a big, handsome woman of thirty-five or so, and
was afterwards the subject of a surprising scandal in the
parish. (I am mentioning only the more outstanding ex-
amples of my amorous precocity.) And, at sixteen, with a
new boldness, I was seriously contemplating the experi-
ment of kissing our exceedingly pretty new housemaid.

That last affair, however, was somewhat different in
kind. It was related to my furtive pleasure in contemplat-
ing the figure of the lady I had offered as a burnt sacri-
fice, rather than to the spiritual drench associated with my
other absorptions. Louisa did not appear to me as a god-
dess. She was a dummy, an improved method of por-
traiture. I urgently desired to embrace her; in my mind
I planned extravagant situations which would give me the
desired opportunity; but in my thought of the embrace
the object of desire was submissive to the point of dul-

2% HOUSE-MATES

ness. For some obscure reason I never questioned Louisa's
willingness to be kissed, although she never gave me the
least encouragement, and I have, now, no doubt whatever
that any rash experiment of mine would certainly have
ended in my humiliation.

A further sign of the unworthiness of these longings
towards Louisa is to be found in their intermittence. There
were days on which I deliberately and with the best inten-
tions refrained from looking at her; there were days on
which I forgot that she was anything but a domestic
servant My worst time was Sunday morning. I do not
know whether this was because there was an added wicked-
ness in giving thought to my desires on that day, or
whether they were not partly induced by the contacts of
clean underclothes which always gave me a feeling of
physical fitness; but I -remember that the hour or so I
spent alone between breakfast and eleven o'clock service
was the time when I came nearest to putting my longings
into action. I used to go upstairs when Louisa was doing
the bedrooms and find some excuse to watch her surrep-
titiously while she was at work. At my boldest I may
have brushed against her as I passed, but I never attempted
to make love to her, nor even to lead up to any familiarity
of speech. I did not see the intrigue in those terms. To
me she was nothing but a subject for experiment. And
I lacked the courage to make the attempt not from the
fear of rebuff but because it would in some way have out-
raged my own code — the code from which I was, never-
theless, so painfully eager to escape.

But what I have called my first serious love-affair killed
my shameful longings towards Louisa stone dead.

The subject of my new adoration was the daughter of
a neighbouring rector, and I first saw her when she came
over to sing in a concert in our schoolroom at Little Milton.
There was certainly good excuse for me on this occasion,
she was undoubtedly pretty. That opinion does not rest

ely upon my own infatuated judgment. During the
concert I overheard various comments on her good looks.

LITTLE MILTON 25

She was probably at her best that night, a little flushed
with the excitement of her performance (she had a charm-
ing little mezzo-soprano voice and sang with a vivacity and
a touch of pertness that were distinctly fascinating), and
her blue eyes seemed to me dazzlingly bright. She must
have been about twenty, then, but to me she had no age.
She was an ideal of beauty, and in my thought she was
raised to an extravagant power of femininity that made
her something more than mortal. I may add that she was
in white that evening, and that the modest exposure of
her throat was but the most distant recognition of evening
dress.

The brightness of her, seen in the glamour of those
surroundings, would have been enough to enrapture me,
and the brilliance of her effect was further heightened by
the fact that her family had a certain prestige in the neigh-
bourhood. The Lynnekers, without any snobbery, in some
way conveyed the impression of breed. The three boys had
all been at Oakstone, and the youngest of them, who was
two years senior to me, had only left at the end of the
previous summer term. He got his first-eleven colours
when he was only sixteen, had had a tremendous ovation
on the following prize-day, and had always figured to me
as something of a hero ever since. He was, in fact, a
worthy brother for so adorable a vision as his sister, Adela.
Indeed, the circumstances surrounding my new object of
worship all helped to put her on a plane recognisably higher
than that of the commonplace vicarage of Little Milton.

She came in to supper afterwards, with her elder sister
and a grown-up brother in deacon's orders. I did not
actually speak to her, but once she definitely smiled at me.
She may have understood the awed rapture of the gaze I
could not avert from her as she sat nearly opposite to me at
the supper-table, and have accepted my devotion as a modest
addition to the many tributes she was receiving that night.

I only saw her once afterwards. Her father's parish
was five miles from Little Milton; and two tremendous
excursions that I made the following summer, ostensibly

26 HOUSE-MATES

to study the Norman architecture of Halton Church, were
not rewarded by any sight of her. I had not the courage
to go up to the Rectory for the church key, which I ob-
tained from the sexton down in the village; but I spent
an hour on the battlements of the church tower, a point
of vantage that commanded a liberal view of the Lynnekers'
garden. Possibly she was away at the time. I saw other
members of the family from my safe distance. The second
time that I caught a glimpse of her was in Medboro'. She
was with her father and sister, driving, in a Stanhope ; and
she never even saw me.

She eloped with the son of the village carpenter rather
more than two years later. My father was dead, then,
and I was living with my mother in London. I had out-
lived my infatuation by that time, but the news came to
me as a shock, nevertheless. I could not understand how
such a young woman as Adela Lynneker had appeared to
me, could have married a common workman. My mother
was equally surprised. "It will be a terrible blow to the
Lynnekers," she said. "I always thought she looked such
a nice girl." I often wonder, now, how that elopement
came about.

But my present concern is solely with the effect that
that youthful adoration had upon me, an effect which can
only be compared with my fits of religious enthusiasm. I
was quite beautifully in love, boy as I was, with Adela
Lynneker. I was purified. I went about rapt in moods
of exaltation. I looked upon Louisa with loathing. I had
no obscene material for sacrifices, but if I had had, I should
have stamped upon the holocaust with a horrified disgust
that had not figured in my earlier burnt offering. In place
of that disavowal, I sacrificed all that I found impure in
my thought, whispering the wonderful invocation of the
sacred name, Adela, whenever I was tempted— as, for ex-
ample, by the sight of a book of my father's with illustra-
tions of Greek sculpture that I had often pored over, on
the pretence of studying architecture. And I cherished a
copy of the concert programme, as a Catholic might have

LITTLE MILTON 27

cherished a fragment of the True Cross. To this day
there is a certain magic associated with that simple an-
nouncement: Song. . . . Die Forelle. . . . Schubert. . . .
Miss Adela Lynneker.

I am quite sure that my first serious love-affair was very
good for me.

My father died when I was seventeen.

He was apparently perfectly well when we went to bed.
It was a Sunday night in the middle of September, and I
was going back to Oakstone for my last year at school
on the following Wednesday. He had preached twice
that day and had eaten a very hearty supper. He always
had a healthy appetite, but on Sunday night he ate more
than usual. He used to say that preaching gave him "an
edge." My mother invariably gave us fish for supper on
Sundays. She had some theory as to fish being a "brain-
food," a theory founded on some chemical explanation of
the properties of phosphorus. Unhappily my father, when
he had fed his brain with fish, went on to feed his body
with cold roast pork. My mother never attempted to re-
strain his appetite. She ate very little herself, but she
believed that "a man's frame required meat," as she put
it; and often worried me because I was naturally inclined
to follow her example rather than my father's.

I am a light sleeper and I heard my mother come out
of her bedroom at two o'clock and go downstairs. I sat
up in bed and listened for her return. I had a vague idea
that the house might have been burgled, and wondered why
my father had not gone instead of my mother. Then I
heard her returning. She did not seem to be hurrying.
She went back to the room she shared with my father
and closed the door gently and deliberately, as if she were
afraid of waking the rest of the household.

I was nearly asleep again when she knocked at my door.
She came in without waiting for my reply. A queer little

28 HOUSE-MATES

figure she looked, in a pink flannel dressing-gown and a
white frilled night-cap. She was carrying one of the small
bell-shaped benzoline lamps we used instead of candles, and
she had turned it too high so that the little pencil of flame
wavered up into a thin wreath of gloomy smoke.

"Wilfred, there's something the matter with your father,"
she said with a little running anxiety that nearly tripped
her speech. "I went to fetch him a mustard leaf and when
I got back ... I don't understand what's wrong with him.
He's so quiet now. I wish you'd come and look at him."

I began to ask questions. I think my chief feeling at the
moment was one of slight annoyance. I tried to diagnose
my father's symptoms before I got out of bed.

"Has he got any pain?" I asked.

My mother looked at me as if I had propounded some
deeply obscure problem that she was quite unable to grapple
with. "I wish you'd come and look at him," she repeated.
She was holding the lamp all askew, and the wreath of
dark smoke waved a shaky response to the trembling of
her hand.

"I say, mother, is there anything wrong?" I said. Her
fear was being communicated to me, but it was for her that
I was afraid. She looked so odd, I thought. I was not
quite sure whether she was not walking in her sleep. I had
no qualms concerning that great strong man, my father. •

"Oh! Wilfred, do some quickly," she said.

"All right. Look out with that lamp, mother," I re-
turned, as I got out of bed. I expected her to go back to
her room while I put on my trousers and slippers, but she
stood perfectly still in the same attitude, and stared at the
bed with the same look of puzzled apprehension.

"You had better take the lamp, dear," she said, when I
had partly dressed.

"Why? Aren't you coming?" I asked impatiently. The
truth is that I was a little frightened of her.

She held the lamp towards me. "You go first," she said,
and she followed me no further than the threshold of the
other room.

LITTLE MILTON 29

My father lay on his back, with his mouth wide open,
and I thought that his lips and face seemed a strange
colour. His eyes were half-open and the eyeballs horribly
rolled up.

"I say, pater, is anything wrong?" I asked.

I did not guess even then that he was dead, but I was
terrified. I retreated from the bed and looked round for
my mother. She was standing just outside the room, with
her two hands clasped over her mouth. She looked rather as
if something had set her teeth on edge.

"It's— it's some sort of a fit," I said. "I'd better go and
get the doctor."

My mother nodded and took her hands away from her
mouth. "Perhaps I'd better call the servants?" she said.

And then we hung for a moment in a ridiculous sus-
pense as to whether we ought to wake the two maids. We
did not discuss the point, but we looked at one another
with evident hesitation.

I solved that by putting the responsibility upon her. "Yes,
take the lamp, and go up to them," I said. "I must get
my things on. And, mother, I think you ought to do
something, while I'm gone. Give him brandy or some-
thing."

We spoke in whispers; I from some fear of disturbing
the living; my mother from the older, more potent fear
of disturbing the dead. She must have known that my
father was dead when she came into my room.

It may appear a little strange that I had not then, nor
for the next hour or so, even a passing apprehension of my
father's death. But life wears such a different aspect when
it is regarded from the cool vantage ground of one who
looks back. There in the baffling confusion of the tragedy
I had no quietness to weigh an inference, no time to con-
sider. And suddenly waked from sleep, as I had been,
my mind had accepted without question the first statement
my mother had made. There was "something the matter"
with him, she had said, and I had understood her state-
ment in the terms of my common experience. He was not

80 HOUSE-MATES

well, I concluded, and my sight of him had only intensified
my realisation of his illness.

"My father has had some kind of fit," was the manner
of my announcement to the unqualified assistant who lived
in the village. I could get no further than that.

The boyish impetuosity of my onslaught upon the door
of his lodgings had brought Mr. Fernsby to his window
with commendable promptitude. He was a queer little
hunchback with a big head, who managed a certain effect of
dignity by wearing a long beard. The explanation of his
failure to obtain a diploma was probably his inebriety, al-
though it is true that might equally well have been an effect.
He was a shrewd little fellow enough, and all that we had
to depend upon in case of emergency; — the nearest quali-
fied doctor lived at Nenton, three miles away.

"Apoplexy?" Fernsby asked, exhibiting the same symp-
toms of procrastination I had shown when my mother had
waked me.

"I don't know," I said. "He's lying frightfully still with
his mouth open and his eyes look awfully funny."

Fernsby either evaluated that at its full significance, or
considered that my unprofessional diagnostics were not
likely to help him. "I'll come at once," he said, and with-
drew into the obscurity of his bedroom. He had looked
quite big and impressive when I saw only his head.

I waited outside for him. I was afraid to go back to
the Vicarage by myself; afraid of my own incompetence
to deal with the unknown terrors of serious illness. I knew
that my mother and the two maids would depend upon
me and I could think of nothing that ought to be done. I
was singularly lacking in confidence and independence at
seventeen; but then so are the majority of boys.

Fernsby hardly spoke as he trotted beside me on our
way back, but now that I had in tow some more or less
dependable expert who would take all the responsibility of
decisive action, the excitement that had been subconsciously
working m me found an outlet in chatter. I told Fernsby
every detail of my conversation with my mother and of my

LITTLE MILTON 31

brief examination of my father ; I told him the whole story
two or three times with improving accuracy.

Fernsby's single question displayed a shrewdness that
seemed to me, then, a trifle callous.

"What did he have for supper ?" he asked ; and if I was
a little offended by what I regarded as an attempt to com-
mon the importance of my news, I answered him to the
last potato.

And below all the ebullition of my excited chatter, an-
other personality, reserved and timid, held itself aloof,
occupied with some general impression of things that had
little relevance to all this apparent preoccupation with
the new experience I was suffering. When I look back,
now, I see that rather fair-haired, callow youth of seven-
teen, from outside. Memory recalls a picture of him and
the sound of his voice, but nothing of what he felt. I
watch him walking beside the queer little image of Fernsby,
whose dwarfed figure, ceremoniously buttoned into the
ridiculous little frock-coat that was his only wear, makes
the boy look unusually tall and graceful.

But my vision of the boy fades when I recall the beauty
of the night; the waning moon with one edge just begin-
ning to melt into the deep hollow of the sky; or the rigid
solemnity of black trees in the avenue, every leaf stiff and
alert in the suspense of an absolute calm. And although I
see, then, with his eyes and feel with his senses, I seem to
have no part in the conversation he is holding with the
little doctor.

(Was my sight of the boy the vision of a marionette
that was the physical expression of myself, constantly
changing, dying and being renewed from within? And if
so, why did the renewal fall always into such similar com-
binations, so that when I look now at a photograph of the
youth, I can still recognise his likeness to the image I see
in the mirror? This flesh I am wearing is not the same
I wore then, but some force (of inertia perhaps?) has built
the cells of it always on the original plan. It is possible
that if the will were resolute enough, it might change the

32 HOUSE-MATES

shape of the man's physical expression ! I can, indeed, dis-
cern small but characteristic changes in my own features—
the mouth has altered, and, I think, the eyes and the chin.)

My mother was downstairs when we got to the house.
She took Fernsby up to my father's room without attempt-
ing any account of his illness, and returned almost imme-
diately to join me in the dining-room.

"How is he, now?" I asked. My excitement seemed to
have withered as I entered the house. Already the first
whispers of a dreadful doubt were coming to me.

My mother shook her head without speaking. She was
sitting, very upright, on a chair by the door, and her two
hands were up at her mouth again with that same sugges-
tion of allaying some almost unbearable nervous pain.

I turned down the lamp a little and sat in one of the
armchairs by the fireplace. The room wore an unfamiliar
aspect; it seemed in some way as if it, too, had been dis-
turbed in its rest, and was unable to adjust itself to the
common appearance of every day. The lamp's steady bril-
liance was an unaccustomed intrusion, imposed upon the
room by extraordinary circumstances.

"You don't think it's serious, mother, do you?" I asked
after a few seconds of listening silence.

She nodded and looked at me apprehensively.

"Very serious ?" I said, approaching a climax I dared not
as yet boldly face. And then as she nodded again, I went
on: "But I say, mother, you don't mean . . ."

I do not believe that she could have dared a complete
admission of the truth just then, but she was saved from
any equivocation by the return of Fernsby. He had not
been upstairs more than a minute. My mother instantly
got up and met him in the hall. I could not hear what they
said, but I knew then. I knew so surely that I did not even
seek for any confirmation.

I heard little Fernsby go out, and then my mother came
back to me in the dining-room.

"I shall go and lie down in the spare room," she said.
"Mr. Fernsby says there may have to be an inquest."

LITTLE MILTON 33

I made no attempt to detain her. We, neither of us, at
that moment, sought any consolation from the other. I
was self-consciously facing a dramatic situation. I did not
know what I ought to do; and it is the truth that I had not,
then, any sense either of loss or of sorrow. And my mother
was suffering from an immense shock. She had not, had
never had, a passionate love for my father; but the sight
of him, so unexpectedly dead, had frozen her sensibilities
for the time being.

She had a reaction next day. She collapsed as if the
strain had been suddenly released. She was seriously ill
for nearly a fortnight, and was unable to attend the fun-
eral. . . .

I fell fast asleep in the arm-chair in the dining-room.
For some reason the thought of going to bed again seemed
incongruous, and even a little heartless. When I woke I
was very cold ; the lamp was nearly out, and the room was
taking on its old familiar aspect in the first light of a
September sunrise.

I discovered then that I, too, must have been immensely
disturbed by the sight of my father's body. I found that
I had forgotten to take off my night-shirt before putting on
my every day clothes.

VI

The death of my father affected me very deeply when
I had had time to recover from the immediate paralysis
of the shock; but for a few hours my imagination was
numbed, just as the body may be numbed by the concussion
of a severe wound. Pain came to me gradually. Even
when I awoke in the cold dining-room to an intellectual reali-
sation of our loss, I was unaware of suffering, and won-
dered at my own indifference. My insensibility seemed to
me a horrible thing, and yet I was, in a way, a little proud
of it; as if I had come through some great ordeal without
hurt.

The first apprehension of some terrifying injury that

34, HOUSE-MATES

had been done to me came when I went down to the river
to bathe — I had no desire to sleep again; it was after six
o'clock and the sun was already beginning to shine weakly
through the mist. The lawn was white with dew, and
as I went down through the garden I repeated a phrase of
my father's — "a catch of frost at sunrise," would have
been his comment on the morning's weather.

Perhaps that characteristic sentence of his first began
to draw my attention to the wound I carried ; and the bath
and its associations necessarily confirmed my realisation
that the hurt would surely ache. The anaesthesia was pass-
ing ; the nerve ends were beginning to smart.

And as I walked back to the house the very beauty of
the morning increased my pain. We were going to have
one of those glorious, still days that come only in Septem-
ber. The mist was dispersing, and the drenched fields were
no longer dead white as if they had been covered with a
smooth blanket of thistle-down ; now, each tiny globe seemed
to have been miraculously clarified, transformed from milk
to crystal-clear water. The smoke from the labourers' cot-
tages lifted from each chimney in a perfect, slender column,
with never a bend or a break between its base and the
feathered capital of its fading dispersion into the hazy sky.
The little birds were twittering and peeking from every
hedge ; up behind the vicarage the rooks were in full chorus ;
and from the glebe farm came the low, monotonous hum-
ming of a threshing machine, with its steady rising moan,
followed by the sudden fall of a major third as fresh corn
was thrown into the feed.

At that moment I had only a sense of loss. I had not been
intimate with my father, I knew nothing of his inner life,
but he had been a companion and I missed him. I wanted
to find joy in that wonderful morning, and I could not be-
cause he was not there to share it. It seemed to me an ir-
reparable calamity that he could never again be there with
me to echo my delight in the stillness and beauty of a Sep-
tember day. My mother did not respond to those influ-
ences. She turned them all into a moral lesson upon the

LITTLE MILTON 35

necessity for thankfulness, and even at seventeen I was
dimly aware that while she thanked God with her lips, my
father and I thanked him better by the intensity of our
enjoyment. We could be glad with the morning ; my mother
looked, nodded a perfunctory appreciation and went about
her work. If she had so thanked a friend for some price-
less gift, she would surely have been accused of ingratitude.

But it was my own loss that hurt me, then ; the real ache
did not come till the afternoon. It was the report of the
Nenton doctor that brought home to me the true sorrow
of my father's death. There was to be an autopsy, and
the thought of that seemed to me quite unbearable. I could
not endure the idea that his body should be so irreverently
mangled.

I lay in the woods that afternoon, prostrate with a grief
I could not quite understand. I found no consolation in
the thought of my father's soul being in Heaven; I could
not believe that he would find happiness there. I felt that
he must be lonely and suffering even as I was; and the
longing to console and help him, and the bitterness of my
impotence, threw me finally into an agony of tears.

And I never found any true solace for that grief. Time
slowly took all the sting and the ache out of it; but quite
recently I felt again the desire to comfort my father in his
loneliness.

II

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN

MY Another and I went to live at Hampstead after my
father's death. We took a tiny house just off the
North End Road, not far from the "Bull & Bush." It had
originally been decided that I was to go into Heaton &
Baxter's office when I was eighteen, but, now, it was deemed
advisable for me to cut my last year at Oakstone and begin
to serve my articles without delay. Mr. Baxter was very
decent about the affair and accepted £150 for my indentures,
a sum that was exactly half the firm's usual fee.

Our choice of Hampstead was determined by my mother's
wish to live near her elder brother — the younger one, the
scapegrace, had been dead some years.

This one surviving uncle of mine, David Williams — my
father had outlived his two brothers — was a solicitor, with
offices in Moorgate Street. His business was almost en-
tirely confined to conveyancing, and although he had, long
since, accumulated a respectable fortune, he continued at
sixty-three to devote the greater part of his time to his
profession. He had a big house with a fine garden, nearly
at the top of Heath Street, and drove down to the City
every day in his brougham. He and his wife had only
one child, a daughter, Gladys, who was four years my
junior.

I had seen very little of these relations of mine before
we came to live in Hampstead. Gladys and my aunt Agatha
had twice stayed at Little Milton for a few days ; and once

36

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 37

my mother and I had stayed in Heath Street during my
one and only visit to London.

Gladys was a fair, thin child who treated me with a
mixture of fear and contempt. I had disliked her quite
actively after my visit to Heath Street; she was eleven
then, and had given me to understand that she regarded
boys as a very inferior creation.

Our relations were a little changed when I came up to
Hampstead to live. I was only seventeen, and still a gauche
youth in country-made clothes, with stove-pipe trousers at
least a couple of inches too short. But I was on the verge
of comparative independence, and I could afford to treat
my little girl cousin with an air of tolerance. I was re-
lieved to find that I could put on the airs of an adult, and
return the snubbing I had received two years before.
Gladys's method of reply was to toss her head and look
a trifle sulky. Even at thirteen she was too dignified to be
pert, or, perhaps, she had not the wit. There was only one
thing I liked about her. She had beautifully clear blue
eyes ; they reminded me of Adela Lynneker.

My uncle was a curious mixture of old fashions and
new ideas. He was a clean-shaven man with an Early- Vic-
torian type of face — he could have worn Dundreary
whiskers without exciting attention — and the cut of his
frock-coat and the shape of his top hat enhanced the sug-
gestion that he belonged to the 'Forties. When I had stayed
at Ken Lodge, I had in my careless, youthful way set him
down as a prejudiced old fogey, and had thought no better
of him for being a "Radical" in politics. (No doubt some-
thing of this attitude was due to my father. I do not think
that he and Uncle David were ever on very friendly terms.)
But when my mother and I came to live so near her brother,
and we saw him and his family almost daily, I gradually
changed my opinion of him.

The discovery that he was not a strict Sabbatarian first
inclined me to regard him with more favour. He always
attended mattins at the Parish Church, setting out decor-
ously with his wife and Gladys, in the approved mid- Vic-

88 HOUSE-MATES

torian manner. But after that duty had been decently per-
formed, he had no prejudices about the keeping of the
Lord's Day. Indeed, he frequently had friends in to play
whist on Sunday evening.

My mother regarded this laxity with grave misgivings,
but to me it seemed a delightful release. I accepted Chris-
tianity, spirit and dogma, without one doubt or question,
but the tendency of my youth was towards revolt against
all the bigotry of Puritanism. Secretly I threw over Sab-
batarianism and the doctrine of Eternal Punishment be-
fore I had been in London twelve months ; but another year
elapsed before I dared confess my apostasy to my mother.

Uncle David managed all our affairs for us after we
left Milton. My father had left a little money; enough to
pay the ecclesiastical dilapidations and the cost of my articles
and to purchase an annuity of just over £100 a year for my
mother. She protested at first against sinking all the capital
in this way, but I took my uncle's part, and persuaded her
that I should never need the money. I was young and
eager, and the prospect of a possible £1500 coming to me
at my mother's death did not interest me nearly so much
as the thought of present necessaries for both of us. I knew
little enough about the value of money, but I was a little
staggered at the idea of living on £2 a week; and if the
money were invested in the ordinary way it would, I was
told, produce little more than half that amount.

My uncle's attitude is not quite so comprehensible. The
truth of the matter is that he had a vein of miserliness
which cropped out on occasions such as this. He knew very
well that my mother and I could not live on £100 a year,
and had made up his mind to double that income for her.
But while he was willing to allow her two pounds a week,
he stuck at three. There is no explaining these queer kinks
in a man's mind. My uncle died worth £ 6,000 a year. At
the time he promised my mother that he would provide for
me later on; but he never put that promise in writing, and
I was not told of it until my mother was on her death-
bed.

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 39

The third person in the Ken Lodge household, my aunt
Agatha, was a professional invalid. She never, as far as
I knew, was seriously ill at any time, and she is still alive ;
but she devoted her best energies to curing various imagi-
nary weaknesses in herself, and so dwelt on the thought
of her ailments that she was, in fact, never really well.

ii

The offices of Heaton & Baxter are in Lincoln's Inn ; and
I began my work there on a Monday morning at the end
of October, 1894.

I had been to the offices once before, with my mother, to
sign the agreement for my articles; but whether I was in
a more receptive mood or more nervous on the second occa-
sion, the impression that remains most clearly in my mind
is of my timid approach and of the presentation of myself
on that Monday morning.

The offices were on the fourth and fifth floors, a position
chosen for the sake of light rather than of economy; and
something about the tedious ascent of those eight flights
of stone stairs had a curiously depressing effect upon me.
The damp smell of the stone, the suggestion of mustiness
that came from the solicitors' offices on the way up, a
general deadness and moist, cold stuffiness about the whole
building gave me the feeling that I was going into a prison.
The feeling was not justified. Heaton & Baxter's offices
were light and warm, and the routine of work there was
certainly not dull. But I never lost my distaste for those
stairs. There have been mornings in spring when I have
hesitated at the doorway, on the verge of deciding for some
great adventure, when it needed but some tiny further
inducement to make me throw up architecture as a profes-
sion, and go straight away to Australia or Canada, to some
place where I might make a living under the sky. If only
I could have run away without preparation ; turned my back
then and there on those repulsive stone stairs, and taken

40 HOUSE-MATES

ship East or West or South the same morning, I should
certainly have gone; but there was always my mother to
be considered. I could not have left her without warn-
ing; and when I was at home with her in Hampstead, the
impulse to run away appeared wild and foolish.

A tall, dark young man of twenty-four or so passed
me as I was going up on that first day of my pupilage.
He was very smartly dressed in a morning coat with braided
edges, dark grey trousers, top hat and brown leather gloves.
He mounted the stairs quickly but with a curious delibera-
tion; he went two steps at a time, emphasising each rise
with a nod as if he were counting or marking the beat of
some tune that ran in his head. He passed me on the second
floor landing, stared at me for an instant as he went by,
and then continued his ascent with the same oddly mechan-
ical dance.

I wondered whether he were Mr. Heaton's son. I took it
for granted that he was bound for the same destination as
myself.

I was taken to Mr. Baxter's room again when I had been
admitted to the office. He was a man of sixty, then, I
should imagine ; a big, rather bluff man with a square grey
beard that had a distinct tinge of blue in it — his hair had
originally been very dark — and rather humorous brown eyes.
The shape of his head and the cut of his beard gave him
a recognisable likeness to the late Lord Salisbury.

He greeted me with a pleasant nod.

"Well, young man, ready to start work ?" he asked, and
got up immediately. I learnt afterwards that he was al-
ways nervous with new assistants or pupils. "Let me see,"
he went on, "you've had no experience, have you? Hm!
well, you'd better begin by copying a sheet of building con-
struction, just to learn the use of your tools. I'll put you
up with Kemplay and Geddes and tell them to look after
you. Come along."

He led the way back into the lobby and then to a little
circular iron staircase that ran up out of what once might

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 41

have been a deep cupboard — a convenient means of com-
munication that had been added by the firm when they took
the offices.

"Mind your head," he warned me.

Geddes turned out to be the smart young man who had
passed me on the landing. Kemplay was a man of between
thirty and forty, short and thickset, with very curly dark
hair and a yellow complexion.

I was very shy when left alone with them. I felt like
a new boy at school and was prepared, I think, for a certain
amount of chaff or even bullying. But both Kemplay — who
occupied the position of "manager" to the firm — and Geddes
were exceedingly polite, if faintly contemptuous. Kemplay
found a drawing of a roof truss, pinned down a sheet of
Whatman's paper on a double elephant board, and gave me
a few instructions concerning the management of a T
square and a scale. After that I was left to puzzle out
for myself a method of reproducing the roof-truss. The
other two plunged almost immediately into a technical
discussion concerning the detail of some plan upon which
they were privately engaged in the evenings — a set of com-
petition drawings for baths and wash-houses in South Lon-
don, as a matter of fact.

Kemplay came over to me once or twice in the course
of the morning and corrected my blundering with a sort
of official good nature ; but Geddes addressed no remark to
me until he was going out to lunch. He had changed his
coat and was untying the little cloth apron he wore round
his middle as a protection against the edge of the d,rawing-
board. He paused by my stool and looked at the brand-
new box of instruments my mother and I had bought on the
day we had come to sign the agreement.

"Whew!" he whistled. "Stanley, eh? Swagger!"

"Mr. Baxter told me to go there," I explained.

"How much?" Geddes enquired.

"Five pounds ten," I said.

"Jolly," was Geddes' only further comment, but I under-
stood that he had intended his remarks as an overture of

42 HOUSE-MATES

friendship, however condescending on his side. I was only
seventeen and my dress proclaimed me a provincial; but I
was an articled pupil with five pounds to spend on drawing
instruments, and must sooner or later be admitted to the
fellowship of my social equals.

Geddes had, also, served his articles with Heaton &
Baxter, and was now staying on as an "improver" at a
nominal salary of £i a week. He was younger than he
looked. I discovered later that he was only just twenty-
one when I came to the office.

The afternoon was more convivial than the morning. I
had my lunch at an A.B.C. in Carey Street, and when I
came back at a quarter to three I found Kemplay at his
desk smoking a pipe, and Geddes with a cigarette, standing
in front of the fireplace.

I changed my coat and returned meekly to my job of
copying the roof-truss.

"Do you smoke?" asked Geddes, after a minute or two,
addressing me.

"Not yet," I said, and then, feeling that it was time I
did something to assert myself, I added, "I only left school
last July."

"Where were you?" Geddes encouraged me.

"Oakstone," I told him. "I don't know if you have ever
heard of it."

"Oh! yes, rather," Geddes said. "Pretty decent school,
isn't it? I was at the City of London."

"Were you?" I replied in a note of admiration.

Geddes completed that paragraph with a nod, and went
on. "Jolly office, this. It isn't every office that you can
smoke in. We're allowed to smoke after two o'clock.
That's old Heaton's doing. You never see him without a
pi?«e' Ba* ter doesn>t smoke— he's a bachelor, you know."

"I see," I remarked, trying to look intelligent. I was not
quite sure whether Geddes intended to imply any connexion
between Mr. Baxter's two forms of continence. But I was
not encouraged to offer any further contribution to the
progress of the acquaintanceship. Geddes' glance had sud-

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 43

denly gone through me, and he appeared lost in some deep
abstraction that engaged his whole attention. He stood
gazing at nothing for a moment or two, and then walked,
still abstrusely occupied, to his board.

"Thirteen four and a half," he remarked, addressing his
drawing, "with a rise of six and a half, gives twenty-five
stairs. . . ." Then he threw the end of his cigarette into
the fireplace and plunged into his work. He did not speak
again until nearly five o'clock.

Kemplay visited me occasionally during the afternoon
and gave me mild encouragement. The rest of my time
was occupied in my mechanical copying, with brief intervals
of staring out through the window at the people who passed
diagonally across the gardens of Lincoln Inn Fields. Nearly
all of them, whether they walked briskly and with obvious
intentness, or lounged a trifle drearily, hopelessly, perhaps;
nearly all made their way from our corner by the chapel
up to the centre, and so far as I could see out at the farther
corner towards the Little Turnstile. And when the chil-
dren came soon after four o'clock, they, too, ran straight
to the centre of the garden and played there among the
seats under the trees. It struck me that they were like
bubbles drawn to the centre of a little whirlpool.

Twelve years later I, too, was drawn into that idle nucleus
one morning, and realised the attraction of the still centre
where one can sit and watch the happy employed go eagerly
by in the delight of their steady occupation. . . .

I saw only one more member of the office staff that day.
He was a youngster of nineteen, or so, with brown, restless
eyes. He stood at the door for a moment, remarked, "Lord,
you swatters," and then vanished. He was dressed for the
street.

Neither Geddes nor Kemplay took the least notice of him,
but when he had gone Geddes yawned enormously, and
then, turning to me, said,

"That's our riotous pupil."

I smiled my acknowledgement of his humorous intention.

44, HOUSE-MATES

"Perfect young ass," Geddes added.

"Is he ?" I said. "What's his name ?"

"Budge," Geddes replied.

I thought it was a joke, but the pupil's name was, indeed,
Budge.

"Of course, we call him Toddy," Geddes concluded, "when
we call him at all, that is. There's a sort of place to wash
in downstairs. Have you got your own soap?"

I blushed at the reminder that I had neglected the im-
portant function of washing before I went out to lunch.

"No ! I didn't know ..." I stammered.

"You can use mine this evening. Come on," Geddes
said. "It's half-past five."

in

That day and the two or three days that followed are
still very clear in my memory. They were differentiated by
their strangeness from all the days that followed. Every-
thing was new and remarkable to me, and all my impressions
were associated in some way with that Queen-post truss I
was copying. I have never had to design a roof with a
Queen-post principal; I don't suppose I ever shall have to
— that type of construction gradually disappeared with the
use of rolled steel sections — but whenever I happen to
see the stock illustration which still holds an important
place in all the building-construction books I have a vivid
sense of my first reactions to those unfamiliar surround-
ings.

Sidney Baxter figures very definitely in those memories.
He had a conscience about his pupils. Many architects
take the fee from their articled pupils and allow them to
pick up the detail of architecture and building-construction
at their own sweet will, while they are serving a useful
part in the general work of the office. But Mr. Baxter
used often to devote a whole hour a day to my instruc-
tions; and he was a particularly able teacher. He would

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 45

come up in the morning before we had begun to smoke and
stand over my board, and explain to me the reason for
the thing I happened to be drawing. I believe I was an
unusually apt pupil — he more than once assured me that I
was — but judging from the incompetence of the ordinary
architect's assistant, I feel inclined to congratulate myself
on having had Baxter for a master. He made one under-
stand. Geddes has said the same thing.

I was eleven years in that office in Lincoln's Inn, and
while I often regret that I wasted, in one sense, such a
great slice of my life, I certainly learnt my profession there
as thoroughly as it was possible for me to learn it any-
where.

Poor old Baxter ! I met him in the "tube" two or three
years ago, and wanted to thank him for all he did for me.
But he had nearly lost his hearing, and was more nervous
than ever. He did not recognise me at first — his eyesight
is failing, too — and then he called me "young man" in his
old manner and asked me how I was getting on. I tried to
tell him, but the horrible clatter of the tube was too much
for us, and as I shouted he evidently grew more and more
shy, looking round at the other passengers as if he knew
that they must be gathering more from my narrative than
he was himself. I did wind up, in desperation, by shout-
ing something about "all due to you, sir," but I know he
failed to get the gist of that. I believe he got out a station
or two before his destination in order to save me from
further embarrassment. That is my explanation of the
fact that he left me at so unlikely a stopping place as
Mornington Crescent. He looked, I thought, very little
older — the blue had faded from his beard, and even his
eyebrows had become white, but he was still wearing the
same steel-rimmed spectacles, the solid gold watch chain
with the Freemasons' pendant, the same shade of fawn
in his spats; and his rather shabby top hat was rammed
on the back of his head at the familiar angle; he often
wore it in the office — he forgot to take it off, I suppose.

Heaton was a very different type, a withered little clean-

46 HOUSE-MATES

shaven man, as precise in his professional methods as he
was in his dress. He represented the practical side of
the firm, and had a fine head for a plan and for economy
in construction. Baxter had the genius. All our eleva-
tions, and we did many things besides ecclesiastical work,
bear the stamp of his personality. I was looking a little
while ago at the front of the Pennyfather offices on the
Embankment, and thinking what Baxter would have made
of London if he could have had a hand in all the new build-
ing that is going up. There is a kind of "gentleness" about
his elevations. I know no other word for it.

And yet I cannot say that he markedly influenced the
style of the three men from his office who have since made
some kind of a mark in private practice. Geddes, Horton-
Smith (who came after I had been in Lincoln's Inn for
two years) and myself were very much affected by Voysey's
work. We admired it from the outset, and allowed our-
selves to be carried away by our enthusiasm for the "New
Art" style in building and decoration that ran a little to
seed just at the beginning of the present century. Geddes
had never quite recovered in my opinion. He still carries
the "simplicity" idea altogether too far. Heaton used to
laugh at us. "Any more toasting forks?" was his stock
joke, referring to the conventional design that was almost
the only decoration used in the style at that period. "Those
infernal squiggles of yours," was a less placid criticism of
his that used to annoy Geddes.

But Geddes was a man with one idea. He deserved to
succeed in his own line. He lived for architecture. The
contemplation of it absorbed him. When one saw him
lost in those fits of abstraction that were so characteristic
of him— fits that took the form of stopping in the street
to wrestle mentally with some problem of building construc-
tion, or, as I first saw him, of assisting his calculations by
counting the stairs up to our office— it was always certain
that architecture in some shape was engrossing his whole
attention. He would stop in the middle of a game of
dominoes to sketch a "toasting-fork" on the marble top

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 47

of the table; and I will swear that when he lost his place
in the marriage service it was not due to nervousness conse-
quent upon the leading part he was playing in the cere-
mony, but to some sudden inspiration that had come to
him in connexion with his work. During the time he was
at Heaton & Baxter's he went in for no fewer than twenty-
three competitions (I collaborated with him "in eleven), and
he never received the encouragement of so much as a third
premium; and any one who knows the enormous labour
entailed in getting out a set of competition drawings in one's
own time, after working in an office for eight hours a
day, will appreciate Geddes' devotion and singleness of
purpose.

The only time I ever saw him depressed was when young
Horton-Smith walked off with the Birmingham job — his
third essay in competition work. "There must be a rotten
lot of luck in these bally things," Geddes confided to me
on that occasion ; a remark that did not do justice to Horton-
Smith's peculiar cleverness. He has proved since that he
has the knack of pleasing competition assessors; a difficult
knack that has nothing to do with luck. I think Geddes
was too conscientious and perhaps too original to win an
open competition.

The only other man in the office who had any sort of
influence upon me during those eleven years was Kemplay ;
and he was one of those mediocre people who defy descrip-
tion. He was married, had two children, and earned £5
a week with no hope of ever getting more unless he had
young Horton-Smith's "luck." But Kemplay gave up go-
ing in for competitions five years or more before I left
the office. Fortunately for him, he had a very equable
temperament and his marriage was a happy one. To me he
looks much the same, now, as he did when I first saw him
in 1894, the only striking difference being the vividly white
streaks in his black hair. His hair was very coarse — I think
he must have had a strain of black blood in him, some-
where— and the first white strand that came showed up like
a false thread in some stiff, dark material. That harbinger

48 HOUSE-MATES

disappeared after a couple of days — his wife had pulled it
out, he told us.

Young Budge enlisted in the Yeomanry at the beginning
of the South African war, and died of enteric in the spring
of 1900. . . .

Mine was a very uneventful life during those eleven
years, and in a sense I, too, was little older at the end of
the time. I gained much technical knowledge, but scarcely
any knowledge of the world. The routine of the office and
the restraint of my home life shut me into a cloister. There
were moments when I vaguely resented my confinement,
and I plunged into one desperate adventure that would
have greatly shocked my mother if she had ever guessed
my defiance of her precious belief in the steadily respectable
piety of such young men as myself and my colleagues in the
office. But for the most part I was tame and compliant. I
liked my profession; I was presently earning two, and
later three pounds a week; and I always had before me the
hope of one day setting up for myself in private practice.
I passed my final examination at the Royal Institute when
I was twenty-five, and thereafter had the right to the use
of the letters A.R.I.B.A. after my name, and an authority
for protesting against the state neglect of architecture as
a profession. If no architect were allowed to practise
until he had passed a qualifying examination, and was there-
after liable to lose his diploma for any flagrant breach of
the London or provincial building regulations, the various
acts that have been passed might really protect the public
from the enormities of the jerry-builder.

I realise, now, that what I missed in those Lincoln Inn
days was some near friend. I was intimate enough with
Kemplay and Geddes, but neither of them was capable of
responding to something in me that was urgently calling
for expression. Geddes was a puritan in sexual matters.
I remember young Budge coming into our room one after-
noon when I had been at the office a few months, and telling
us a story that was really funny, even if it was not fit for
publication. Kemplay laughed, with perhaps a touch of

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 49

self-consciousness; I giggled and blushed; but Geddes told
Budge not to be "a dirty little beast." Budge lost his temper
and told Geddes that he was a "rotten prig," but Geddes
was perfectly cool — he had a most annoying way of keep-
ing his temper — and from his sure and comfortable plat-
form of conscious righteousness he was able to maintain
a lofty attitude which there was no assailing. "Clean" was
the word he insisted on, and poor young Budge getting
/redder and more furious every moment had no better an-
swer than to swing out of the room and slam the door.

That incident had a strong effect upon me at the time. I
was young, impressionable and innocent ; I had been brought
up at home in an evangelical atmosphere, and had naturally
found my friends at Oakstone among boys of more or
less the same temper ; also, during those first years in Lon-
don, I was always under the restraint of my mother's influ-
ence ; and, finally, I looked up to Geddes with his technical
knowledge and his smart clothes as to a very superior crea-
ture. I attribute much of the gaucherie and shyness of
my youth to the habit I acquired in those early years of
peering at sex with a blush and a sense of shame.

A friend of the right kind might have helped me, but
as luck would have it, no friend came my way until I had
left Lincoln's Inn.

rv

I was twenty-three when I met Nellie Roberts.

My mother, my uncle and his wife, the little circle of
our rather elderly acquaintances at Hampstead, even the
obsessed Geddes, would certainly have regarded that inter-
lude as shameful, but I feel no kind of shame or regret,
now, when I think of it; although the strong religious re-
action which finally terminated my relations with Nellie
brought with it a conviction of sin, and a quite definite
feeling of remorse.

I have had little experience of the ways of London's
underworld, or of the women who frequent it (unl'ess I

50 HOUSE-MATES

can count my later observations of the unfortunate Rose
Whiting as experience), and I cannot say whether Nellie
Roberts was a rare exception from her kind. She was
not in the least like the women I have seen at night in the
streets off Piccadilly Circus, nor those more successful
courtesans I have observed in the promenades of various
music-halls. But she may represent a select class, and I
can only regard myself as being unusually fortunate to have
met so simple a representative of it.

I met her one Saturday afternoon in August, 1900, near
the bandstand in Hyde Park. I was far too shy to be a
woman-hunter even if I had dared the thought of such a
feral pursuit; and it was the merest accident that I hap-
pened to sit down so near her. Only one empty chair sep-
arated us.

The initiative was hers, of course ; but she was not hunt-
ing any more than I was. She was there for pleasure, sim-
ply, even dowdily, dressed, and with no "make-up" on her
face. And when she turned and made some remark to
me about the fineness of the afternoon, she had no ulterior
purpose in her mind. My bashfulness and embarrassment
appealed to her, at that moment; she wanted some one to
talk to, and she saw, I suppose, that I was very unlike
the sort of young man with whom she was all too familiar.

When I had partly overcome my first shyness, I en-
joyed her company. She had an inquisitive, critical mind
and her comments on the passers-by amused me. She was
the entertainer; I had nothing to do but express my ap-
preciation of her wit.

And she would have left me without making any further
advances if I had not summoned up my courage to ask
her whether she often came to Hyde Park on fine Satur-
day afternoons. She looked at me suspiciously for a mo-
ment, but my ingenuousness was too patent for doubt, and
she smiled with the first hint she had given of approaching
a flirtation, as she said she would meet me there again the
following Saturday.

I suppose I imagined myself to be in love with her dur-

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 51

ing the week that elapsed before I saw her again. I thought
of her constantly with a vivid recognition of the fact that
I hoped to continue the acquaintance, and I was perfectly
aware that the meeting would be considered improper from
the Hampstead point of view, an impropriety that had a
peculiar attraction from some tendency which stirred within
me at that time. I was in the unfulfilled condition of a
young man who has no outlet, and my yearning took the
form of a desire for the society of young women — my
cousin Gladys was in Brussels then. In such a condition
a man may imagine himself in love with his aunt, and
Nellie Roberts was about my own af2, and pretty in her
simple, pert way. No doubt, I belie ed myself to be in
love with her.

Our second meeting put the affair on quite another foot-
ing. The afternoon was dull and threatened rain, and we
presently took a bus up to Piccadilly and had tea together
in a restaurant in Panton Street to which Nellie introduced
me.

We were on the verge of parting before she sprang her
surprise on me; I had paid the bill and was reaching up
for my hat, an action that from some obscure reason gave
me the courage to proffer my prepared question: "Shall I
see you again, next Saturday?"

Her face set in a .sudden expression of resolution. "I
suppose you know what / am," she said.

But I had had no intuitions.

"Do you mean ... ?" I began timidly. I was still stand-
ing wedged between the table and the plush-covered seat,
and supporting myself with one hand against the wall. I
believe my first guess was that she was married, and I
looked down, now, for the first time to see if she were
wearing a wedding-ring.

"Oh ! sit down," she said, with a touch of petulance, and
then, "You surely don't mean to tell me that you're as,
innocent as all that."

My expression of bewilderment must have convinced her ;
she pursed her mouth and seemed to hesitate as to whether

52 HOUSE-MATES

she would not, after all, keep me — a single entry perhaps—
on her list of innocent men friends. She had had all my
history that afternoon. She had prompted me with ques-
tions and had appeared to take a deep interest in my willing
replies. I was less ready than ever to lose her society after
that second meeting.

"Well, I suppose you know what . . ." She started,
broke off with a shrug of her shoulders and said, "Didn't
you guess I was a light woman?"

Even then I was still puzzled for a moment.

"Do you mean ..." I began again.

"Well, you didn't think I was a lady of fortune, did
you?" she asked. ] believe the temper in her voice was
assumed to cover hei awn confusion.

I understood, then — not fully, because my mind had been
filled with stories of the bold adventuress who enticed such
as I was to strange, secret places for robbery and murder.
But my most urgent desire at the moment was to say the
"right thing," whatever that might be.

"I don't know," I stammered — I saw I must say some-
thing—"I thought perhaps . . . you don't look the least
like . . ."

She was brutal. "I don't' look like what?" she insisted.

"I thought perhaps you were in a shop or something," I
said.

I used to be a hospital nurse," she returned. "I've got
a photograph of myself in uniform at home."

I did not understand her indignant claim to a social posi-
tion above the shop-girl class, but I jumped at the oppor-
tunity to get to what seemed a safer topic. Her show of
temper made me horribly uncomfortable.

"Why did you give it up?" I asked humbly.

"The usual thing," she said.

I said "Oh!" as if I understood, but she saw through
my pretence.

"He was a medical student," she explained. "We're go-
) be married as soon as he can make a living."

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 53

I was hopelessly at sea again. I believed her statements
which were indeed true — even the last one, incredible as it
may seem. And I could not reconcile them with the general
vague conception I had formed of the "bad women" against
whom my mother had once or twice nervously warned me.

"He wouldn't like it much," I tried, "if he knew that
you were having tea with me, would he ?"

"Well, I've got to live, I suppose," she snapped.

It was impossible for me to understand all the complex
motives and feelings that were disturbing her. Even now
I can only guess dimly how she was influenced by a kindly
feeling for myself, by a longing to retain some vestige of
social dignity ; and by the urgent money troubles that were
harassing her that August. I judged her attitude, so far
as I judged it at all, from certain general premises — partly
gathered from romantic fiction — I was incapable of allow-
ing for the fact that she had twenty-five years of individual
life behind her, and that her character, training and ex-
perience were all finding expression in that scene with
me at the restaurant. My one source of concern, just
then, was to regain the pleasant terms of our former inter-
course.

"Of course. Rather," was the form my conciliation took.

"You don't suppose I like it any more than he does?"
she said sharply. And through the density of my ignorance
some appreciation of the true state of the ca.se began slowly
to filter. Fortunately I was inspired, at last, to a happier
response.

"You see, I'm so fearfully innocent about things," I said.
"I've never met any one before who could explain about
them to me."

She smiled. "Innocent !" she said. "Yes, you are that, I
must say."

"Well, when shall I see you again?" I asked cheerfully.

"Afraid to go out in the evenings, I suppose ?" she asked.

I admitted that I was. My mother would accept an ex-
cuse for my absence on Saturday afternoon, without mak-
ing detailed enquiry, but an evening out would necessitate

54 HOUSE-MATES

some elaborate lie that I was not, then, prepared to fabri-
cate.

"Well, next Saturday?" she suggested. "You can come
to my rooms." She looked at me searchingly as she said
that. "You're sure you want to come?" she added; and I
am not certain that my ready assent altogether pleased
her.

She gave me a card with an address in Paddington. . . .

She changed her shape for me during the week that fol-
lowed. I no longer imagined myself in love with her — she
was not, for some physiological reason, the type that at-
tracted me — she gradually assumed the shape of Louisa,
the housemaid, and this time there was no vision of a
glorious Adela to divert me.

And I want to confess that I was not ashamed when I
returned to Hampstead the next Saturday evening. My
chief feeling was one of release. I did not blush when
I greeted my mother; on the contrary, I was aware of a
new strength and confidence. I felt that I had somehow
vindicated myself.

I met Nellie many times in the course of the next two
years. She was my one experience in this kind, and I
came to have a very friendly, companionable feeling for
her.

She was a simple creature, and our only quarrels were
provoked by her mention of the medical student who had
promised eventually to marry her. She saw him every
Sunday, and it irked me that she should put him in a class
by himself, a class from which I was inevitably excluded.
After one such quarrel I did not see her for nearly five
months. The man, himself, must forever remain a mystery
to me. I never met him— Nellie never suggested that I
should do that— but I have seen his photograph, and re-
member it still so well that I believe I should recognise
him if I saw him in the street. He had a heavy, rather

65

stupid face, but he looked honest. Nellie insisted that he
was well connected. I should like to know whether he ever
married her. . . .

And not for eighteen months did my conscience begin
to reproach me. My cousin Gladys's return from Brussels
was the chief cause of that change of attitude. Triad lost
the habit of going to Ken Lodge after our first year or two
in Hampstead, and I had seen very little of Gladys since
she was eighteen.

I remember going to dinner with my uncle and aunt, soon
after she returned, and finding that our alternations of
superiority had settled down into son-othing approaching
equality. We began to talk about Poelaert's Law Courts
at Brussels, a building that had already won my enthusiasm
from sketches and photographs. She discussed it very in-
telligently, and was evidently delighted to find that I was
eager to listen and approve without attempting to contrast
some English example. Her three years at the finishing
school had given her a proprietary interest in Brussels and
so far I was the only person she had met since her re-
turn who had been willing to admire her authority.

And after dinner, when Gladys was singing to us in the
drawing-room, I remembered Nellie with a sudden horrible
consciousness of the sordidness of that intrigue. Nellie's
rooms, her accent, even her simple, honest self seemed so
impossible when considered in my present surroundings. I
had an unpleasant sense of not being fit company for my
own relations.

I only saw Nellie twice more after that; and the second
time definitely closed our intercourse.

I had grown bolder and less honest, then. I used to
tell my mother that I spent the evening with Horton- Smith
who, conveniently for me, had rooms not very far from
Nellie's.

I left her about eleven o'clock that night, with no premoni-
tion that we should never meet again. Indeed, I was in a
boastful mood; inclined to regard Hampstead society as
I knew it, with contempt ; and it was mere pride that made

56 HOUSE-MATES

me go on to the rooms of' Horton- Smith on the chance of
finding him still up, in preference to making my way home
by the Metropolitan to Gower Street, where I could catch
the yellow "Camden Town" bus up to the lower Heath. I
knew that I risked missing the last bus, but I wanted to
miss it. I felt equal to any adventure; any challenge to
respectability.

And Horton-Smith was up and had two other men with
him, one of whom I had met there before, a quiet chap
from an architect's office in Moorgate Street. They greeted
me with enthusiasm and insisted upon playing solo-whist.
They had been playing the three-handed game before I
arrived, and were rather sick of it. I was quite willing
and we kept it up till past three in the morning, by which
time only the quiet man and myself were capable of dis-
tinguishing the cards. Horton-Smith and the stranger were
hopelessly drunk. I take no credit for my own sobriety.
I have never been able to drink more than one glass of
whiskey in an evening; the smell of the second always
produces a horrible feeling of nausea.

The quiet man and I left the house together, but he lived
at Notting Hill and we parted on Horton-Smith's door-
step.

I was still very elated when I came out into the stillness
of the July night— all sense of sleepiness had left me about
one o'clock. I had been chaffed by Horton-Smith and his
friends upon arriving so late in the evening. They had put
but one construction on my employment of the time before
I joined them, and although I had given them no confidences,
I had not denied the truth of the charges they brought
against me. I had been, I thought, a man of the world. I
was pleased with the part I had played.

And, now, I wanted to enjoy the sense of my own com-
pleteness and well-being. I did not feel the need for any
companion; I was in a mood to enjoy my own company
and the realisation of my own powers of sensibility and
vision.

London seemed wonderfully opened to me during that

HAMPSTEAD AND LINCOLN'S INN 57

long walk. As I went down Bishop's Road and over the
railway bridge, there was a lift in the sky towards the north-
west, and the weak reflection of daylight was creeping in
to mingle with the clicking violet light of the arc-lamps in
the sidings. The night was hardly disturbed by the jolt
and clankings of trucks, and by the occasional sound of
men's voices, hoarse and distant, shouting unintelligible in-
structions in the darkness of an abyss that ran into the
mouth of the station.

But when I had come down the Harrow Road, and
through Chapel Street, I found another impression that
was better suited to my mood. The light ahead of me was
steadily growing so that now the hard silhouettes of roofs
and distorted chimneys stood up against the sky. Every-
thing here was very still. The town was asleep; and it
pleased me to find in it a vision of some place that was not
London.

I walked in an older city, exploring unknown mysteries.
Every side turning was an avenue that led to some deep
wonder. ... I was a spirit alone and undaunted, come to
a place that existed only for me; that was mine to hold
and presently to change at will. All the potentialities of it
were there, but my strength was sufficient to mould them
as I would. I could be at once the explorer and the master.
. . . The place was crying to me for release from its own
ugliness. Within it was a fugitive soul that knew its own
distortion of form, and sought my strength to lift the
pressure that had forced it into so gloomy a shape. ... I
floated in a calm serenity of power. I was no more aware
of myself as an individual presence. My spirit was enter-
ing into the body of London, and every brick and stone
of her was becoming a cell that would presently reflect the
brightness of my desire for beauty. ... I knew that all
cities were the expression of men's thought, but whereas
my own thought was clear and lucid, able to conceive grace
and delicacy of form; this new body into which I had so
lately come was the outcome of greed and antagonisms ; of
jealousy and mean ambitions; of clumsy, turgid thoughts

58 HOUSE-MATES

that had no sureness of direction. ... I was filled with a
delicious sadness of regret for all the desires of men who
had lived and died and found no steadiness of expres-
sion. . . .

I came back to the body of Wilfred Hornby, pacing with
sedate regularity along the Marylebone Road, a little to the
west of Park Crescent ; and the picture I saw with his eyes
at that moment was endowed with the ecstasy of my recent
vision. The invisible sun had brightened the east to a hard
steel grey, and before me the asphalt shone like silver, steam-
ing wet from the foaming whiteness of a great jet of
water that lifted in a splendid curve from the nozzle of
a black serpentine hose. And the dark figures of the men
who moved deliberately here and there were rimmed with
the brightness of the morning that shone round them and
flung splashes of light from every brimming crease of
their spray-soaked oilskins.

I stood quite still. I wanted to throw up my arms and
hail the coming of day with a great shout. . . .

But afterwards my mood slowly declined and when I
stood on the summit of Hampstead Heath and looked down
over the blue clearness of London, blown clean of smoke,
and sparkling here and there under the vivid newness of
the sun, I saw it as one who stands to watch the glint of
a sail nearly lost on the horizon. I wa,s separated, a man
in the toils of endeavour. I had no supreme power; no
insight.

And then my eye caught the white spire of Highgate
Church, and all my mood of the night shrank into a sudden
resolution.

MY religious fit lasted for about six weeks, counting from
its very definite and sudden access to the last fitful
effort, the final desperate convulsive clinging to the skirts
of a mood I could not recapture by a deliberate effort of
will.

I call it a mood now ; but the name I had for it at that
time was "the Holy Spirit." I believed that I had been
"called," that some great destiny of martyrdom was before
me. I read the lives of the mystics, and was greatly com-
forted to find that some of them, like myself, had been
profligates and sinners before their conversion. The one
real doubt that had beset me in the first days of my inspira-
tion was whether so great a sinner as I had been could be
found worthy of saintship. Nevertheless, I believe that
the thought of my justification marked the first decline of
my endeavour. Perhaps I was too greatly comforted by
the recognition of my own worthiness.

Yet, from the beginning, my emotions were curiously
mixed. On the one hand I was filled with a fury of self-
abasement. I humiliated myself. I sought methods of
discipline, searching out my secret sins and being particu-
larly severe with any tendencies towards selfishness and
hypocrisy. I even went so far as seriously to consider the
necessity of taking orders — as a penance ; for through all
that mood I persisted in my distaste for the orthodox profes-
sion of religion. On the other hand, I was secretly elated,

59

60 HOUSE-MATES

full of a sense of power and holiness, proud of the dis-
tinction that had been conferred on me.

And those two violently opposed attitudes subsisted quite
equably side by side, reacting upon and stimulating each
other ; so that even as I abased myself and considered such
forms of discipline as ordination, I sat in pleased approval
of my own humility.

The declination of my spiritual rapture was so gradual,
that only in retrospect can I mark the stages of my rever-
sion to the normal. But when I, now, consider myself in
relation to some memory-stimulating incident of that period,
I can clearly discern a difference in intensity between, say,
the third and fifth week of my seizure. By the third week
there were lapse.s of consciousness; periods gradually ex-
tending, during which I forgot alike the splendour and the
irk of my religious intentions. For, curious as it seems, I
did, in effect, finally forget altogether. I remembered with
my mind, as I still remember, all the long diminishing phase
of my rapture ; but this intellectual memory no longer awoke
my spiritual desires. And after each interval of spiritual
forgetfulness, the response to the ideal of sanctity was less
spontaneous, more mental, so that towards the end I had to
work myself up into a state of devotion by an effort of
will.

I think the last such effort was made about six weeks
after my first vision.

I never made any complete confession to my mother. She
guessed something of what was in my mind, and began her
approach to the winning of my confidence by looking at me
with an encouraging hopeful expression. At last, after
some four or five days of my new life, she found courage to
put her question into words : "Haven't you anything to tell
me, dear?" she asked, and went on, "I have noticed a change
n you, lately." She evidently hoped to pave the way for
me. She might have been asking me if I were in love.

I made no evasion on the score of misunderstanding her
question, but I would not "open my heart" to her as she
presently suggested. "Not yet," was the encouragement I

GLADYS 61

gave her, implying that her guess was a true one but with-
holding all confidence. I was influenced by several mo-
tives. In the first place, I was not ready then to share my
glory with any one ; I was afraid of diminishing my rapture
by trying to express it in words ; and I knew that my mother
would, unconsciously, lower the plane of my emotion. She
would have seen it all in terms of a "call" to take orders,
and that, to me, was but a minor phase of the grand inten-
tion. But beyond that sufficiently powerful motive for
silence, I was aware of the danger of hypocrisy. I was
afraid to proclaim my selection, lest the boa.st should con-
demn me. And, again, I believe that I recognised in some
dim way the danger of openly making any pledge. The
taking of vows reminded me too nearly of my bonfires in
the vicarage garden; and at the further heights of my
new devotion to holiness I fervently denied the least rela-
tion between my present state and those earlier brief con-
versions. The precedent was altogether too ominous.

My mother's prayer with me on that and one or two
subsequent occasions confirmed me in my resolution to tell
her nothing until I was, as I put it, "quite sure of myself."
Her very phrases flattened the wonder of my experience.
"Grant that he may be led to serve Thee," was the dominant
motive of her request; and that side of me which walked
among the stars was, in some odd way, a little offended
by the significance of that prayer. . . .

ii

All that exciting ebullition had subsided before my mother
and I went to Eastbourne for our summer holiday. We
were to be the guests of my uncle and aunt, who were
already installed in very comfortable furnished apartments
when we joined them. This was the first time that I had
spent my holiday with the Williams ; and I believe the plan
was the beginning of an unostentatious campaign to encour-
age a greater intimacy between myself and Gladys.

62 HOUSE-MATES

I seemed to meet her for the first time that September.
Until then she had been nothing more than a cousin, some
kind of impersonal Relation, an appurtenance that I had
accepted as being in the general scheme of family life. In as
far as I had regarded her as an individual, I had, before
her return from Brussels, rather disliked her than other-
wise.

She was undoubtedly very pretty. She had the very fair
hair, the blue eyes and the delicate smooth features that
are often ascribed to the "doll" type of beauty. But she
was saved from that inanity by the shape of her face and
the thinness of her lips. And her eyes had an intellectual
steadiness that regarded everything, including myself, with
a questioning criticism; no one could have likened Gladys
to anything so insipid as a doll. She inherited her fair-
ness from her mother. My uncle's hair still showed its orig-
inal warp of black through the increasing silver. His eyes,
too, were dark. The Welsh strain showed more domi-
nantly in him than in my mother.

My attitude towards Gladys during that fortnight at East-
bourne passed from that of a casual relation into a recogni-
tion of friendship. The change came about one morning
quite early in the holiday.

I had had a swim before breakfast, and went on alone
to the Parade to read the morning paper, while Gladys
had her bath. She never wetted that soft, fair hair of
hers in salt water ; and she looked deliciously neat and fresh,
when she joined me about half-past eleven. She was wear-
ing a frock of blue linen— a rather keen blue which she had
almost perfectly matched in her sunshade — and she gave a
definite effect to our little patch of the parade. There was
a certain fitness, I thought, about her appearance, there ; I
felt that the crowd round us would be aware of a blank
in the scheme of colour when she went away. The blues,
reds, whites and greens in other women's dresses had a
temporary, invading air; Gladys came with an effect of
completing her immediate surroundings. She was deco-
rative and satisfying to my sense of values. And the blue

GLADYS 63

lights with which she had surrounded herself gave an added
clearness and transparency to her delicate, clear skin ; it re-
minded me in those conditions of the soft glaze on some fine,
mature piece of china.

She came prepared, I think, with a plan of conversation.
She began at once by reverting to our little discussion of
the Brussels Law Courts, and from that we presently drifted
into an argument on the merits of design in town-planning.
My vision of London on that night in the Marylebone Road
had survived, and was now thrusting up through my reli-
gious emotions, as the fresh, green shoot of what was to me,
then, a new idea.

"It's this awful haphazard way of building," I said, "that
makes places like this;" and I waved a reproving hand in
the direction of Eastbourne.

Gladys considered that for a moment. "Sometimes it's all
right," she began, with a little perplexed hesitation; "old
Brussels, for instance, the Square, you know, and the way
the town clings to the hill." And then she evidently saw
the solution she was looking for, and went on: "It's only
modern towns that are so ugly, isn't' it? I think I hate all
modern things ; they're so crude." *^

"Oh! no," I protested; "you can't sweep them all into
one heap. There's a lot of good stuff being done."

"Like the things in the 'Studio'?" she asked.

I agreed to admit the instance.

She shook her head fastidiously. "It doesn't mean any-
thing," she said. "It doesn't express any spirit. Don't
you think that it's all rather artificial?"

I was not prepared for that flat condemnation. I had
never had to defend my theories of a new spirit in archi-
tecture against a serious attack. Mr. Heaton's criticisms
had no weight, we knew that his strong points were all
on the practical side; Geddes dismissed Heaton with a
contemptuous shrug. And the only other person who had
attempted an argument against us was Kemplay, and he did
it for the sake of talking — he always ended by admitting
that he thought we were right.

64 HOUSE-MATES

"Oh, it does ; it isn't," I protested. I wanted to be very
lucid and convincing. I had no sort of doubt that Gladys
was wrong, probably through ignorance; and I was eager
to convert her at once ; it seemed so absurdly easy ; but I
had nothing to say.

She turned and looked at me, and the blue of her clear,
steady eyes shone out at me from the shadow of her
parasol.

"You believe in this . . . this New Art, then ?" she said,
and her voice conveyed a faint surprise.

"Oh ! yes, rather," I affirmed.

"You think it's going to grow into something ?"

Her tone flattered me. She made me feel that, however
unexpected my view had been, she was willing to defer to
the opinion of an expert.

"I think it is something, now," I said, and catching at
some echo of Geddes' creed, I went on: "You see, what
we're after is a much greater simplicity, and in architec-
ture, anyway, we mean to get more meaning into building.
All that old Georgian stuff, you know, and the imitation
Gothic is just bad copying. Poelaert was different, but he
was an exception. What we've got to do is to express mod-
ern city construction in a characteristic — er — twentieth cen-
tury way." (It had been such a relief to us when we came
to the end of 1800 and could boast a new era.) "And there
are the beginnings of a new style in some of this recent
work. Smith & Brewer's Settlement in Tavistock Place, and
things like that. They're not properly evolved yet, I dare-
say, and some of them have got rather a Byzantine feeling
that must be got rid of; but they are, well, pioneers." I
paused to find some final example, and concluded lamely:
"Don't you like Voysey's stuff ?"

"Those funny houses with the queer little buttresses?"
she asked.

"Some of them are ripping," I said with conviction.

"Yes, I think, perhaps, some of them are," she admitted.
She still regarded me with that air of poised attention.

"You're very keen, aren't you?" she continued.

GLADYS 65

"Oh ! yes," I said. "But what Geddes and I want to see
is a whole new town built on those lines ; all planned from
the beginning, you know. There is some talk, now, of a
scheme to try that — as an experiment in housing. . . ."

She seemed to brood over that for a moment, and then
made some comment on the vulgarisation of Eastbourne
that was quite beside the point. "I can't think where that
type of young man comes from," she said, indicating by a
quick turn of her eyes two youths who had been persistently
promenading up and down our end of the parade.

"City clerks," I said. Geddes and I were terrible snobs
in those days.

"They stare so horribly," Gladys replied.

I had not been displeased by the promenaders' interest
in my companion, but I made some expression of disgust
at their bad manners.

"You must tell me a lot more about the new style in archi-
tecture," Gladys began again, after a pause. "I'm not quite
a convert yet, but I daresay I shall be."

"I shall certainly do my best to convert you," I said,
smiling.

"Will you?" Gladys asked. "Why?"

"It would be so jolly if we could talk about it some-
times," I said. I was, aware at that moment of stepping
over some quite negligible obstacle that I had hitherto re-
garded as insuperable. Gladys had taken a new semblance
for me during the last few minutes. She had shown in-
terest in my opinions; she had by her criticism of those
two persistently staring clerks placed me in the privileged
circle from which she chose her friends ; and I felt that
she and I were forming some kind of alliance against the
indifferent crowd who took no interest in the future of
Art. Her next sentence warmed me still further.

"I think you are one of the people who are sure to get
on, Wilfred," she said. "You are so keen, aren't you? It's
such a splendid thing really to care as much as you do
about your work."

I blushed an invisible blush — invisible because like many

66 HOUSE-MATES

fair people I tan red instead of brown, and my face was
then in a transition stage of inflammation that no flush
could deepen.

"I mean to have a gobd try," I mumbled, and then I re-
covered my self-possession and boldly stepped over the
appearance I had deemed an obstacle into my cousin's
friendship.

"It's a tremendous help in a way," I said, "to have some
one like you to talk to, Gladys. In the office the men are
all more or less on the same tack as I am. But you've been
abroad and got a wider view of things, and you're — I don't
know exactly what it is — I suppose it is that you are not
prejudiced."

She looked at me with a frank, kindly smile — she was
twenty years older than I was. "You mustn't imagine that
I'm an expert," she said.

"Experts are always more or less prejudiced," I re-
turned.

I expected a further compliment from her, I think. I
was certainly conscious of being an unprejudiced expert
just then; but it was my cousin's turn for praise and her
trap was a better one than mine.

"But I suppose you often talk to Aunt Deborah about
your work and your ideas," she said.

"Oh ! yes, of course," I agreed, "but . . ."

"But ... ?" she prompted me; she was determined to
enjoy her little triumph.

"Oh! well, of course, she doesn't really understand," I
said. "She listens and agrees with me, but she can't criti-
cise, and so on, as you can."

Gladys gave her sunshade a little spin and watched
the slowly revolving ribs with deep attention. "I've read
a lot about architecture," she admitted modestly, "but I've
never had much chance to apply my reading. Talking to
you makes it so real."

I had had my return and was satisfied with it. As we
went back to our rooms for lunch, we were very well pleased
with each other. But her pleasure and mine must have

GLADYS 67

been of very different kinds. Mine was largely due to
the feeling that I had found a friend in my cousin. I
had come suddenly to an appreciation of her quality. She
was, I thought, both clever and sympathetic. I was ashamed
of my old dislike for her; and glad that we should have so
many opportunities in the next ten days to exchange ideas.
One impersonality still remained and, if I had examined it
that morning, I should have regarded it as a still further
cause for satisfaction. Gladys, in becoming a friend, had
not become more sensibly a woman. I admired her. I liked
to watch her face and the finished effect of the crisp fair
waves of hair over her forehead. I thought her repose
and her capacity for stillness very beautiful. I wanted to
model her head and neck and cast it in some delicately tinted
soft china. But I felt no desire to kiss her any more than
I felt a desire to kiss the marble statue of a nymph in my
uncle's drawing-room at Ken Lodge.

And I can only guess what shape her pleasure took.

"I do so much want to know about these things," she said
as we went home. But I fancy that knowledge for its own
sake had little attraction for her. It was enough if she
could, convincingly, appear to know.

in

She must have kept up that appearance most admirably
during the Eastbourne time.

We were free to see as much of one another as we pleased.
My uncle only came down for long week-ends — he had had
ten days' holiday before my mother and I arrived ; my aunt
Agatha was just starting a new illness, neuritis, and found
that her skin was peculiarly affected by the sunshine that
we were enjoying in such magnificent abundance; and my
mother very rarely imposed her company upon us. She
would come out for half an hour in the morning, after she
had done her prescribed course of religious reading, and
would then return to sit with her sister-in-law. My aunt was

68 HOUSE-MATES

not particularly religious, but my mother was a gentle, sym-
pathetic creature who seemed capable of enduring endless
accounts of the appearance and precise significance of my
aunt's more complicated symptoms.

So Gladys and I spent much of our time alone together.
We went long walks to Cuckmere and Pevensey and Bex-
hill, which was then in a more or less experimental stage
and did not tempt us to repeat the visit. And once we
made a day excursion to Hastings by steamer.

Our conversation during those walks was not by any
means confined to the theory and practice of a new style
in architecture. Gladys had a way of letting our discus-
sions slip into irrelevancy; indeed, sometimes when I was
deeply interested in my own subject, she would chill me by
an interruption that made me wonder if she had been lis-
tening. Yet she often initiated those discussions of ours,
generally by asking a question. It seemed as if she could
only maintain her interest for a little time; as if our talk
of architecture called for an effort that soon tired her. She
would come, prepared, to the opening of the day's argu-
ment, but when her lesson had been said she would ven-
ture no further contribution on the inspiration of the mo-
ment. So it usually fell out that we began by sharpening
up some point that had been left hanging the day before,
and then come to some account of Gladys's experiences in
Belgium. After the first two or three days, I had definitely
become the teacher in my own subject, and it was only fair
to give her an opportunity to play the informant.

I am putting this all down as I see it now; but as a
matter of fact I did not come to any serious reflections on
Gladys's intelligence for nearly two years. And during
that Eastbourne holiday I only remember one occasion on
which I approached anything like criticism.

We were on the steamer coming back from Hastings. It
was a clear, still evening, but after the warmth of the day
the air felt cold and the wind of our movement had driven
the majority of our fellow excursionists to take up posi-
tions aft of the deck-houses. Gladys and I were standing

GLADYS 69

in the bows staring at the headland which formed the other
point of the long, shallow bay we were crossing on the chord
of its arc. We could not believe that that point was Beachy
Head, it looked so absurdly near, a quarter of an hour's
journey, at most, and yet we knew that the distance from
Hastings to Eastbourne by sea was fifteen miles.

"There can't be any doubt about it," I said, at last.
"Look, that's the awful Bexhill over there; the half-way
mark."

"It does seem incredible, though, doesn't it ?" Gladys com-
mented. We were both a little excited, as people are
when they meet some unusual phenomenon of this kind.
The sight of an extraordinary meteor, the experience of
an unprecedented storm; the realisation of any happening
that suddenly contradicts the dull normality of our ex-
pectation, puts us for a moment outside physical life.
There is something of mystery and adventure in most ab-
normalities. I have wondered if the spirit is quickened by
a memory of all that lies beyond the logic of natural law.
And is not some element of surprise present in every true
work of Art — surprise that stirs a sense of amazed recog-
nition ?

And then Gladys shivered and snuggled herself a little
closer inside the knitted coat she had brought to wear on
the steamer.

"Yes, it is cold, now," she said, in answer to my com-
ment.

"Let's get behind one of the deck-houses," I suggested.

She looked back along the deck and shook her head.

"Why not?" I asked.

She screwed up her nose in a pretty little intimation
of disgust. "I — don't — like — the people — much" she said
confidingly.

"Oh! I see," was my rather hesitating response.

"They're dreadfully common, aren't they?" she persisted.

"Quite clean and sober, though," I admitted.

She screwed up her nose again. "Oh! yes," she said,
"but one doesn't want to be too near them."

70 HOUSE-MATES

I feebly concurred, preferring to remain in the limelight
of my cousin's approval rather than attempt the expres-
sion of the thought that had been weakly stirring within me.

I think I must have been on the edge of a "moment" just
then. I knew that the little excitement of watching the
phantom headland, so mysteriously near and unapproach-
able, had roused in me a feeling of fellowship with hu-
manity ; a feeling that had curious-ly enough not been very
prominent in my great religious upheaval. And Gladys
broke my mood. She interfered between me and some-
thing precious that I longed to grasp. For one dragging
second of time I was resentful; I had moved beyond the
circle of her influence and I criticised her. Then the day
enclosed me again and I wondered at my own impulse.

But of all the surreptitious creepings within the hard
shell that still so lightly bound me, this was the first that
seems now to have been truly indicative. I think my feath-
ers were coming.

IV

I became engaged to Gladys the following summer.

I was cuddling down into orthodoxy, with every hope
of establishing myself before long in a comfortable niche
that would enclose and protect me from the risks of life.

My uncle had recently introduced me to his friend, Rollo
Parkinson, who was vaguely "looking about for a place
down in Buckinghamshire," and had stated his intention
of building a house for himself as soon as the ideal place
was found.

I had done a few sketches for him, and he had told
my uncle that I seemed "a very clever young fellow,"
and that he might be able to put a lot of work in my way.

As a prospect, Parkinson and my uncle seemed to promise
better than the competitions Geddes and I so faithfully and
fruitlessly entered for.

I proposed to Gladys one Sunday morning after service.
We left her father <md mother and the prayer books at

GLADYS 71

Ken Lodge on our way up Heath Street, and went on up
to the flagstaff. The vicinity of the Whitestone pond, how-
ever, was unendurably clamorous with the barking of dogs
retrieving, or refusing to retrieve, sticks ; and we wandered
down towards the Vale of Health and found a quiet little
seat facing over the valley towards Highgate. — From that
distance I can always deceive myself into thinking of High-
gate as a village, and I get a romantic satisfaction from
the pretence. For some reason it has always delighted me
to imagine parts of London as being something other than
they actually are.

I began to display the fancy to Gladys, but her response
did not encourage me. She played the game too intelli-
gently; and by recreating the Highgate associated with
Whittington, somehow turned my vision into a history
lesson.

I was quite ready for a change of subject when she
began to talk of Parkinson.

"I'm so glad you pleased him, Wilfred," she said. "He
has got a heap of influential friends and he may be very
useful to you."

I agreed willingly. My only objection to Parkinson was
his obstinate insistence that the Queen Anne manner was
the one possible style for the house he had in mind. I
had suppled myself to his opinion in the designs I had
made, but Geddes had been down on any weakness. "After
all, it's his house," I had said; and Geddes had given me
a lecture on the necessity for educating one's clientele. I
should have liked to see him educating Parkinson. He
would have tried, of course, and lost the job.

"I'm sure, if you once get a start in private practice,
that you'll be a big success," Gladys went on thoughtfully,
and she turned her eyes from their contemplation of the
Heath and looked at me with a gentleness and a shyness
I had not seen in her face before.

"It's ripping of you to take so much interest in me," I
said. Her interest still flattered me. If there is a charm
to some men in the ideal of an exquisite remoteness, they

72 HOUSE-MATES

would surely have found my cousin a beautiful object for
worship.

She blushed delicately, her cheeks warming for a mo-
ment to the timid rose of a shell. "I have always felt,"
she said in a low voice, "ever since Eastbourne, that your
destiny and mine are mixed up together."

Before she made that speech I should have regarded
the idea of asking Gladys to marry me as nothing more
than ludicrous. I had never thought of her as a possible
wife. But, now, I knew beyond the possibility of doubt
that she intended to be engaged to me ; that she had amaz-
ingly offered me this wonderful gift of herself. I felt a
little as if some one had offered me a priceless piece of
statuary.

I was dreadfully clumsy over my acceptance.

"By Jove, have you really ?" I said, and jny tone was one
of awestruck wonder rather than rapture.

"Always," she said. She sat very still and was appar-
ently gazing at the south elevation of Highgate Church,
starting out clear-cut in the sunshine like a plaster model.

"But, Gladys," I said, "you don't mean that you could
ever . . •. that I could . . . ?"

"Because of our being first cousins?" she asked, without
moving.

"No, I hadn't thought of that," I said. I was paralysed
by a doubt as to whether I ought to kiss her. I found an
escape from that in the reflection that our situation was too
public. I gently touched one of her white-gloved hands
instead. The hand was conveniently near mine at the
moment.

"But, Gladys," I repeated, determined to have the con-
ditions of my option perfectly clear, "is it possible that
you like me enough to marry me?"

"I have always liked you," she said quietly. Her hand
moved confidingly in mine, and she dismissed Highgate
Church from her attention and looked at me with the same
gentle shyness that had introduced our new relations.

"It — it seems so incredible — that you should," I mur-

GLADYS 73

mured. I tried to look at her and had not the courage.
My blush was to hers as the peony to the wild-rose.

For what seemed a very considerable time we sat in
silence, still nervously holding each other's hand. I believe
that some obscure corner of my mind was wondering where
I should put her. I knew that she must always have a ped-
estal. I found my way back to speech by the usual con-
ventional suggestion.

"Do you want me to tell them?" I asked. "Uncle David
and my mother?"

"I don't, see why we shouldn't," Gladys said.

"You don't think he'll mind; Uncle David, I mean?"

She smiled confidently. "You can leave him to me,"
she said, and then added: "Are you so frightened of him?"

"I am, rather," I admitted.

"You're not frightened of me, too, are you ?" she asked.

I found courage to look up at her, then, and her eyes
were bright and had in them some light of conquest that
reminded me of the eyes of Adela Lynneker.

"You are so very beautiful, Gladys," I said with a sigh.
"In a way, you — you do, rather, awe me."

"How silly!" she commented gaily, but I saw that she
was pleased.

"I should never dare to — to kiss you," I said.

She looked gaily over her shoulder, shifted her sunshade
and bent towards me with a quick gesture of invitation.

My hand tightened convulsively on hers as I touched her
soft smooth cheek; and then my other hand clasped her
arm and I kissed her lips.

She permitted me that embrace long enough for my con-
sciousness to be aware of her touch, before she jumped up
blushing, warmly now, as if she had, at last, felt the pulse
of hot life.

"You soon overcame your fright, dear," she said with a
little air of reproof.

"Let's go and tell them," I said, and I took her hand
in my arm and we walked back. I had no doubt, just then,
that I loved my cousin to distraction.

74. HOUSE-MATES

My uncle took me into his study after dinner. They
dined in the middle of the day on Sunday and had a cold
supper at night. Our talk, however, was the merest con-
vention; there was nothing to be said.

I always think of my uncle as being a little man. He
was, I suppose, about five feet seven, or eight, but I am
exactly six feet in my socks and apt to forget that my
height is something above the average. I cannot pretend
that I understood him or his motives. He was just an
uncle to me, then; a fact to be accepted as one accepted
the usual phenomena of existence. His face was deeply
lined, more particularly about the mouth, and he had a way
of peering at one with a rather suspicious frown that
made some people feel uncomfortable. But I fancy that
that was largely an acquired mannerism due to an effort
to disguise a tic that perhaps had worried him in earlier
life. The facial spasm took the form, in his case, of a
portentous wink of the left eye; and no doubt he had
had to assume a forced sternness in order to allay the
suspicion that his wink might be due to an unprofessional
levity. He had, too, a very deliberate habit of speech,
filling his pauses with a sound that might be written "er —
hum— er," the "hum" taking the shape of a cough that
never went deeper than the back of his throat. It would be
too tedious to report him; but the effect he had upon
me was chiefly due to these external symptoms which filled
me not with laughter, as might possibly be expected, but
with an odd sense of apprehension. Whenever he spoke to
me alone I felt as if he were preparing the way for some
awful revelation.

That Sunday afternoon I certainly had cause for uneasi-
ness. Gladys had spoken very confidently of her father's
attitude towards our engagement, but I was painfully aware
of ^my own ineligibility when Uncle David began :

"Gladys has told me— er— hum— has told me — er — that

GLADYS 75

you have," and then came a pause for that tremendous wink,
"er — hum, made her a proposal of marriage." And it all
came out in the tone of a speaker who makes a solemn
announcement at a public meeting.

I believe I was in the study with him for the best part
of an hour, but, as I have said, neither of us had anything
to say. My uncle winked and "er — hummed" himself
gravely through the ceremony of what he supposed was
the inevitable interview, and left me only wiser by the
knowledge that I was to make some sort of a position for
myself before the marriage could take place. He said
something about three years as the probationary period,
but he did not make a special point of it.

I was not at all depressed by the advice that I must
be making a living as an architect in private practice be-
fore I married my cousin. I meant to achieve that ambi-
tion fairly soon in any case, and I could count, now, more
surely than ever on my uncle's backing. Also, I was not
in any hurry to marry Gladys. It was glorious to be en-
gaged to her, but the thought of her affected me with none
of the impatience that I had sometimes felt before a visit
to Nellie Roberts.

I was proud of that difference of feeling. I counted
it as a sign that my love for Gladys was of the best and
purest quality, purged of the physical yearnings that seemed
to me at that time horribly gross and material. There
was, I think, a great similarity between my emotions dur-
ing the first months of my engagement and those I had ex-
perienced during my religious fit. Both were etherealised
and abstract; they lacked the element of love for my own
kind that might have given them reality. If that motive
had stirred me during my evanescent worship of some
tenuous ideal of purity, I should have certainly taken or-
ders and gone out into the world as an evangel, instead
of secretly cherishing some pharasaical conception of my
own righteousness.

What would have been the result if Gladys had warmed
me to a more urgent desire, I cannot say; but I imagine

76 HOUSE-MATES

that she would have shrunk from any manifestation of
passion. Once or twice, when I kissed her with unusual
zeal, she winced a little; and afterwards I felt ashamed,
as if I had taken too coarse a liberty with so fine and
sensitive a creature.

Another point of similarity between my spasmodic de-
votions to God and Gladys was shown in my desire to
cherish the secret of my ecstasy. It is comprehensible
enough that I should have said nothing to Geddes or
Kemplay; for just as I had known myself unable to ex-
press to them my new-found idea of God, so also was I
aware of my inability to describe the exquisite quality
of my fiancee. But I might have found a confidante in my
mother. She was willing enough to listen. I believe she
wished to see me married.

She knew, of course, that she would come to live with
us; our relations were such that a separation was incon-
ceivable, and we only spoke of that once, when she rather
shakily enquired where I thought I should live after my
marriige.

I was of opinion that we could not do better than Hamp-
stead or Highgate.

My mother agreed; those two suburbs were all London
to her — she very rarely went as far as Oxford Street, and
had never been inside a theatre in her life. Then she made
her one tentative suggestion by saying:

"I suppose I could stay on here?"

I laughed. "But, of course, you'll come to live with us
wherever we go," I said.

"Are you sure Gladys would like that?" my mother
asked.

I had never mentioned the idea to my cousin, but I re-
plied without the least hesitation. "Rather. We've never
thought of anything else," I said.

My mother was watching my face with a certain
anxiety, but her doubt was not as to my intentions with
regard to herself.

"You might feel that you want to be alone for a time,"

GLADYS 77

she ventured ; and she knew that she was approaching the
subject I dared not discuss, the reality of my love for
Gladys.

"I couldn't possibly marry if you didn't come to live
with us," I said. "So we needn't talk about that any
more."

And nothing more was said then. My mother kissed me
and thanked God for having given her such a good son.
But afterwards she often hovered on the verge of a more
direct question.

I wonder, now, whether she was not divided between
her love for me, between her genuine desire for my happi-
ness, and something that can only be called jealousy. She
had moments when she realised far more of my feeling
for Gladys than I knew myself. She was afraid for me,
and yet at the same time glad that my devotion to herself
was not interfered with. She must have had some crucial
struggles with her own conscience, if I am right, for she
was extraordinarily honest with herself.

Perhaps, if I had been equally honest, I should have
drawn some inference from the sincere statement of my
determination not to marry unless my mother came to live
with us. But, if a doubt crossed my mind, I put it away
from me at once. I was in love with my enjoyment of
life; my chief outside interest at the moment was my
engagement to Gladys, and I would not have sacrificed it
from any scruple of conscience. I turned my back on
my doubts as upon some denial of beauty; or, better still,
dissipated them by watching Gladys and thinking myself
into a condition of worship.

VI

It was a very trivial incident that suddenly woke me
from my dream and set me to face what I could only
regard as the very difficult problem of my future.

We had been engaged for nearly eleven months, then;

78 HOUSE-MATES

and the first fruits of my uncle's influence and backing
had matured in the form of a definite commission from
Mr. Parkinson. He had at last found a site that suited
him, not far from West Wycombe, and I had been down
to see it and was getting out drawings for the house
he proposed to erect. It was to cost £3,500. My mother
spoke hopefully of a scheme to set me 'up with an office
of my own. Nothing had been said of that to my uncle
as yet, but she believed that he would be willing to finance
me until I was earning enough to pay my own way. The
corollary to this proposition was an early marriage with
Gladys. In my mother's mind the last suggestion figured
partly, I think, as an insurance against all possible fail-
ures. She knew her brother's weakness with regard to
spending money, and wanted to clinch his responsibility.
He might find some excuse for neglecting me, but he would
never permit his daughter to suffer.

And, at the time, that proposition appeared to me as
just and honourable. It was all in the general scheme
of life as I knew it. I had confidence in my own ability
to earn a comfortable income as soon as I could make
my name known. I had already had designs and articles
published in two building papers, and received a few
letters concerning them, one of which contained a definite
enquiry from a possible client. That was another way
of escape from Lincoln's Inn, and it seemed to promise
well. I had, indeed, little doubt of my professional fu-
ture; and I should, therefore, have had no qualms about
accepting temporary assistance from my -father-in-law. I
was planning my niche in society just as Geddes or Horton-
Smith were planning theirs. We were intent on the com-
mon purpose that had been held up to us as the chief
object of our lives. We had to mark out our place in
the congeries; find security, a home, a limited circle of
acquaintances; set a label on ourselves and live within
the rule of our class. At twenty-seven I had outgrown the
more romantic ambitions of my youth. Cathedrals and
great public buildings no longer filled my dreams. I had

GLADYS 79

discovered my limitations and marked my future place
in society. At the best, I saw myself succeeding Norman
Shaw as an architect of private houses.

These anticipations were quite definitely in the fore-
ground of my consciousness. If they had been fulfilled, I
should have remained a shapely, admirable egg. But, all
unknown to me, another spasm was convulsing my spirit,
and this time it found expression in a new shape. . . .

Gladys had always refused to play tennis or croquet
with me in the Ken Lodge garden. Games did not interest
her, she protested. I should often have preferred tennis,
and even croquet, to conversation in the presence of Aunt
Agatha — I have always been as keen on games as the aver-
age young Englishman — but none of my tentative efforts
after persuasion hud ever induced Gladys to take up a
racquet or a mallet. She did not, theoretically, condemn
games; she would sit and watch them being played; but
she said that she never felt the least wish to play herself.

I accepted that attitude without resentment or criti-
cism. It seemed to me typical of Gladys. It seemed
to keep her on the pedestal she graced so becomingly.
And then, one Saturday afternoon, I saw her with both
feet on the earth, and I could never put her back on her
throne.

I called at Ken Lodge on my way back from the office.
I had told Gladys that I should not come that afternoon;
I had meant to go home and work ; but as I came up on the
bus to Pond Street, I was tempted by the beauty of the
day, and I decided to fetch Gladys and go for a walk across
the Heath to .Highgate.

It must have been nearly three o'clock when I came
to the house, and the maid told me that my aunt was in
bed and my uncle not yet home from the city, but that she
believed Miss Gladys was in the drawing-room. I was very
much at home in that house, and I walked into the drawing-
room unannounced.

Gladys was not there ; she was playing tennis on the lawn

80 HOUSE-MATES

outside with a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, the daughter
of a Hampstead friend.

I stood at the drawing-room window and watched them,
and all the spell of my engagement was suddenly broken.

The Gladys I saw was no longer the still, graceful woman
who had seemed to me the incarnation of delicate beauty.
She was a gawky, clumsy creature, incredibly inept at the
game she was attempting to play. She ran awkwardly, the
movements of her arms and body were horribly ungrace-
ful; and yet she was entering into the game with some-
thing of eagerness. She was manifestly doing her best
to win.

And I saw her instantly as a "poseuse." I felt no resent-
ment against her for having lied about her distaste for
games. She had, indeed, a most excellent reason for lying,
since she must certainly have known that the effort could
only be made at the sacrifice of her whole effect. I could
understand and endure her untruth, even applaud her mo-
tive for maintaining it. What released me was my realisa-
tion of Gladys's personality. She was, I saw all too vividly,
only a semblance. More than once, recently, I had had
passing doubts as to her intellectual capacity. We had seen
so much of one another during the past twelve months
that it was inevitable she should slip sometimes; and she
had slipped on occasion quite unmistakably. And I had
wondered for a moment and then found half a dozen expla-
nations, she was tired, she had been inattentive ; I had mis-
understood her. . . . Now, I understood beyond any pos-
sibility of doubt. I knew that her interest in Art and
Literature was no less a pose than her still grace of move-
ment. She affected those interests; she wore them taste-
fully displayed in telling suggestions, reserves, and admis-
sions of ignorance. One talent she had, and so far as I
guessed then, only one : her genius for knowing what suited
her. ^ There was a real woman underneath her affectations,
but it was not the woman that had won my admiration.

I crept quietly out of the drawing-room as if I had wit-
nessed something disgraceful and obscene. As I walked

GLADYS 81

home the sight of the gawky girl who was my fiancee
haunted me.

I wanted, now, to confide in my mother; to tell her the
whole story of my illusion. I desired her consolation when
I was in pain, if I had an instinct to conceal my joys. But
I could not tell her about this because I believed that it
was a secret I was bound in honour to hide. I had no
excuse for breaking off my engagement, and I still meant to
carry out my part in the contract ; even to marry the woman
who lived under the appearance I had known.

I
VII

It is quite possible that self-interest played a part in the
making of this decision; but the alternative might have
daunted a braver, more honest man than I was. Much
courage is required to defy the conventions when the de-
fiance will make one appear not as a hero but as a fool.
The world in which I lived would not have accepted the
excuse that I had ceased to care for Gladys. My mother
would have been deeply grieved, my uncle permanently
offended, all our friends would have thought me dishon-
ourable ; and Gladys — no, I do not know how Gladys would
have been affected. It certainly weighed with me that she
might suffer. After my first violent reaction against her,
I found something very pathetic in her magnificent effort
of make-believe — I could not have sustained such a part
for a week. And beyond and after these excellent reasons
for carrying on the engagement remained a perfectly rea-
sonable consideration for my own future.

I awoke to a depressed struggle with this problem early
on Sunday morning, and answered it as most other young
men would have answered it. Something must be sacri-
ficed, and the offering I proposed to lay on the altar was
some vague idea of love or it may be only of emotion.
Outwardly the glory remained. None of our friends would
know, as I did, that Gladys was a mere simulacrum.

82 HOUSE-MATES

One more point remained to be settled, and that was my
attitude towards Gladys herself. In the course of morn-
ing service I had a romantic yearning to be quite honest
with her. I saw myself as being rather splendid, and
having an effect upon her that amounted to "conversion."
I could just see her perfect profile from my seat, and I pic-
tured a scene in which Gladys wept honestly but still beau-
tifully. I was moved to great tenderness at the thought
of her confession. I believed that I might find a way
out of all my perplexities by creating a new image of our
relations to one another, and she was to be adoring, pliable
and grateful.

That sentimental dream was finally dissipated before
dinner.

We did not go on up to the Heath together that morning.
There had been a heavy shower while we were in church
and the streets were steaming in hot sunshine when we
came out. But wonderful tumultuous masses of cumulus
were piled high in the south-west, and Gladys thought we
had better not go too far from home; so when she had
taken off her hat, we went and sat on the back-lawn where
we were not overlooked from the house.

I was foolishly nervous. Now that I was alone with her,
I could not recall the picture of a Gladys either pliable
or grateful. She was so amazingly the same as she had
always been ; and my memory of her as she appeared play-
ing tennis was as the thought of a phantasm that had had
no reality. If the initiative had been left to me, I should
have made no reference to the previous afternoon ; but she
began at once by saying:

"Ellen says you came yesterday, after all ; why didn't you
stay?"

I looked in vain for any sign of embarrassment as she
spoke. There was a shade of asperity in her tone, but she
had often censured me recently with just the same sugges-
tion of thin disapproval.

"Oh! I don't know," I said. "I had to go home and
work,"

GLADYS 83

'

"But you told me you weren't coming at all," she per-
sisted. "Why did you change your mind?"

I began to suspect an uneasiness underlying her indirect
questions, but I had no intention of leading her on when
I replied:

"It was such a jolly afternoon. I thought you might like
to come for a walk."

She frowned without disfiguring the smooth whiteness
of her straight forehead — just the least puckering of the
eyes and a droop of the eyebrows expressed her annoyance.

"But, my dear Wilfred," she remonstrated, "why are you
so mysterious? Really, I don't understand. You came to
tell me you had to work, you say, a fact that I knew
already, and in the same breath you say that you came to
fetch me out for a walk. Now, which do you mean ?"

"I came to fetch you out, I suppose," I said; and even
then she feinted rather than ask me directly why I had
changed my mind. I was sure, then, that she knew.

"You are perfectly incomprehensible at times, dear," she
said.

I felt as if I were doing a very brave thing when I re-
plied : "You were playing tennis. I didn't care to interrupt
you." I looked away across the lawn with an instinctive
wish to spare her. I believed that she would be shamed. I
was genuinely astonished when I heard her little tinkling
laugh.

"Oh! Wilfred, I wasn't," she said. "That little Burton
child came round and I had to amuse her somehow. You
know I hate tennis ; we were only knocking the balls about.
I should have thought you would have guessed how thank-
ful I should have been for any interruption. You really
are extraordinarily dense at times."

I could not go on with that subject. In a sense I was
afraid. I had realised the perfect futility of the dream
I had had in church, and understood now, far better than
I had the day before, the quality of my cousin's pose. It
had crystallised ; taken, as it were, a hard, unvarying sur-
face that she could present without effort against any attack.

84 HOUSE-MATES

Her very personality had in it something of the charac-
teristics of the porcelain to which I had so often likened
her physical beauty. One might break her by a sudden
blow, but she was no longer plastic. Her outline was set
and could never be altered. And if one broke her nothing
would be left — nothing that would be worth keeping.

"I'm sorry," I said feebly. "I suppose I knew that I
ought to be working, and when I saw that you had some
one with you ... It wouldn't have been any fun going out
with Elsie Burton. . . ."

She held her advantage.

"I do wish sometimes that you wouldn't be quite so
lackadaisical," she said coldly ; and I saw that it was I who
would presently be moulded into a new shape.

VIII

The year that intervened between that conversation and
the death of my mother must have been a particularly dreary
one. Looking back upon it, I have an impression of my-
self patiently frowning my way into the acceptance of a
future that appeared, even then, to be singularly unin-
spiring. I can recall no moments of inspiration through-
out those long months. I was resigning myself to the
steady contemplation of the commonplace, and my thoughts
were blurred by an increasing cloud of depression.

All the incidents of that time are associated with Gladys.
Such small excitements as going to the theatre, or, when
Aunt Agatha was well enough, an afternoon on the river,
or a little dinner party at Ken Lodge, come back to me
now as connected with some further tightening of the chain
that I was fitting myself to wear. Only in the early morn-
ings was I ever able to delude myself that the future still
held some enchanting possibilities for me. I sometimes
dreamed then, deliberately reckless of the chain; dreams
in which Gladys had no place.

I have dated this period as definitely beginning with our

GLADYS 85

conversation on that Sunday morning, and I think I am
right in marking that talk as the first indication of a change
of relationship between me and Gladys. I knew then that
any feeling I had for my cousin was nothing more than
admiration of her physical beauty; and after I had seen
her gawky attempts to play tennis, even that compensating
excuse for our engagement was denied to me. I could
not forget that she was only graceful by acquired habit. It
was as if I had exposed some fine piece of furniture as a
clever fraud. By accident I had chipped away a fragment
of veneer and had seen the coarse material below; even
the horrible glue that served to maintain the deceit. I
tried desperately at times to delude myself that nothing
was altered, that the appearance was no less beautiful than
before, that even the fraud itself was brilliant enough to
demand my admiration. But it was no good. The sur-
face remained, the grace of the lines, all the outward evi-
dences of beauty; but I could not forget my sight of the
deal and the glue; and I saw that, as I had carelessly ex-
posed that foundation once, I might blunder into further
experiments. I might be tempted to pick again at some
tempting edge of what I knew to be nothing more than
veneer.

Gladys's change of altitude was not less inevitable than
my own. She knew. I am certain, now, that she knew
all I had guessed. How far she deceived herself I can-
not say. She would have found a hundred reasons for
keeping her own admiration. Nevertheless, I believe she
grew to hate me during that next year of our engage-
ment, and she may have held me to my promises mainly
to support her own pride. If. she had let me go, taken
the initiative and thrown me over, she would have admit-
ted the fraud; and she may have been honest enough to
dread the making of such an admission to herself. And yet
I am not sure. I cannot pretend to understand her secret
thoughts. Indeed, I have occasionally been driven to
the conclusion that she never had any secret thoughts ; but
that in some positive, instinctive way she simply persisted

86 HOUSE-MATES

because she was subconsciously aware that retreat meant
some kind of self-revelation.

Whatever her motives, the effect of them was displayed
in what I can only call an increasing cruelty to me. She
no longer condescended to any admiration for my work
or my opinions, but began quite openly to mould me that
I might fit the destiny of her invention. She had our future
all cut and dried, and she did not disguise the fact that
she meant to rule me.

I remember, for example, a dinner-party at Ken Lodge
that autumn, and the public attack that Gladys made
upon me. And the occasion is further remarkable inas-
much as that was the first time I saw Morrison Blake, whom
I disliked so peculiarly at the time and to whom I had
reason later for being so uncommonly grateful.

He was a man of nearly fifty then, I should say ; a rather
stout man, not very tall, but producing an effect of au-
thority. He wore a full beard and moustache, the former
cut something in the style shown in the Nineveh reliefs,
but the crisp curl of the brown hair was not, in his case,
artificial. His pate was nearly bald, but the tufts of hair
over his ears and along the nape of his neck suggested
that originally his hair had curled tightly all over his head.

I had heard of him by repute as the greatest living ex-
pert on antique furniture, and I had looked forward to
meeting him. What repelled me from my first sight of
him was the too evident delight he took in himself, in his
appearance, his opinions, and everything that belonged to
him. I have never known a man so overpoweringly con-
ceited. He was a great talker, too. He flowed on in his
rich tenor, giving us anecdote after anecdote of his experi-
ences as an expert and a collector. I will admit that the
majority of his stories had considerable point and interest
and that he told them well, but he never for one instant
attempted to disguise the important part that he himself
had played in the revelation of a fraud or the swindling
(I called it swindling) of the unhappy, ignorant possessor
of some article of virtue.

GLADYS 87

My uncle and aunt were very attentive to him. He had
been a client of my uncles for some years, but this was
the first time they had been able to persuade him to dine
with them. The only other stranger present was Lady
Hoast, the widow of old Sir George Hoast, who made his
money in leather ; and she contributed little to the conversa-
tion. She was a very tall, stiff woman with a long, thin
nose and an air of having always been about her present
age.

Gladys was very charming to Blake throughout the in-
terminable length of dinner. She listened to his stories
with absorbed attention and laughed with an appearance of
abandon that was splendidly convincing. After about the
third course, Blake was obviously telling his stories more
particularly for Gladys's benefit, although his other listeners
were not less attentive than she was. Lady Hoast had a
queer, silent laugh that seemed to ripple through her, be-
ginning at the head and so trembling down from her shoul-
der to invisibility. I imagined it passing away with a final
tremor of her feet. There were only the six of us, my
mother was even then too ill to come out at night.

It was in the drawing-room, after we had joined the three
women, that Gladys made her attack upon me.

Blake had been telling a story about a piece of Queen
Anne silver, and no doubt the mention of the period re-
minded her of my objections to the architectural style be-
loved of Parkinson.

"Do you admire the Queen Anne style, Mr. Blake?" she
asked, and I guessed at once what was coming.

"In silver, certainly, Miss Williams," Blake said, and
then, waving one of his exquisite white hands, he went on :
"But nearly all the old stuff has the virtue of real design
and feeling. It's only the abominable things they make
to-day, the defective imitations, or poor, fumbling attempts
at originality; it's only these nineteenth century things that
I unhesitatingly condemn. I've always been catholic in
taste. I have said that you can find beauty in any piece
of an earlier date than the end of the i8th century, if you'll

88 HOUSE-MATES

take the trouble to look for it. I believe that. Real Art
died with the French Revolution."

Gladys looked up at him, demure and yet ecstatic. "Oh !
I do so agree with you," she said. "I have been trying
hard, lately, to convert Mr. Hornby. He is an architect,
you know, and so obsessed with the idea that the only
possible style is this 'New Art.' "

Blake looked at me as if he had for the first time be-
come conscious of my presence; and his glance pitied my
profound ignorance rather than my wrong-headedness.

"I have only two objections to your 'New Art,' Mr.
Hornby," he said. "It isn't new, and it isn't Art." He
laughed as if he had said something clever.

Gladys gave me no time to reply, even if I had had any
adequate retort to Blake's stale witticism. "I was sure
you'd think that," she said, as if no other opinion was now
possible. "You must really convert Mr. Hornby — he is so
obstinate about his theories."

Blake looked a trifle bored. "Oh! these theorists!" he
returned with one of his fat gestures. "They'll recover their
good sense if you give 'em time — those that are worth
bothering about. The others can go mad in their own
way; they can't do any harm." He was so superbly confi-
dent that opposition failed to make him angry. He looked
down on me and my like with good-humoured contempt.
He was rich, he was clever, he was handsome in his cor-
pulent, curly-haired way, and above all he was treated with
the respect and admiration due to a specialist who has no
near rival. To him the struggling Geddesses and Hornbys
were callow youths whose opinions were not worth one
instant's consideration.

Gladys looked at me with a kind of tender commisera-
tion. She had successfully demonstrated in that com-
pany the worth of my taste in art.

And I, poor, drudging creature that I was, exhibited no
outward sign of my resentment. I blushed and mumbled
and allowed the magnificent Blake to roll over and then
forget me in the recountal of another story from his in-

GLADYS 89

terminable list. I was coiled up so closely within my
shell; and my one thought was to reconcile myself to that
tight enclosure. I hugged the thought that one day I, too,
might be rich and regarded as an authority. My chief
desire just then was to stand on my own hearthrug, sur-
rounded with the furniture of my own taste, and to exhibit,
in his own presence, the poverty of Morrison Blake's truck-
ling to the antique. I was hardly aware of any need for
inhibiting that desire. I had my model, and if I had
any dread of my future it was due to my doubt of Gladys.
It is not well to start a collection with a piece that one
knows to be fraudulent.

But I dreamed a new dream as I took my tub next
morning — we had no bath-room in the little house in the
North End Road. I pictured Blake falling in love with
Gladys — I put it that way because I had no doubt of her
response ; she would never be able to resist the glory of
such a marriage. And for a moment or two the dream
gave me relief. I looked into an unfurnished future that
expanded into vague enchanting depths without any kind of
boundary. I had come near to the edge of a vision when
I found myself facing the dreary stairs of the office in
Lincoln's Inn.

April was coming in and in the Gardens the pressure
of young life was thrusting its way to freedom. I would
have run away that morning if it had not been for my
mother's need of me. I knew that she was failing rapidly
and I could not leave her then.

IX

I find it impossible even after this length of time to write
about my mother's last illness. I cannot explain my reluc-
tance. I propose presently to write of something much
nearer to the heart of my life than the emotions I experi-
enced in the long three months that intervened between
our knowledge that her death was inevitable and the last

90 HOUSE-MATES

gradual slipping through unconsciousness to separation.
But that slow parting had a quality that I cannot define
in words, and I prefer to leave the description unattempted.
She and I came to understand one another very well before
her recognition of all material life ultimately failed, some
ten days before the obstinate vital functions ceased from the
hopeless effort to maintain the form of her body. She was
curiously less religious during those last two months. Some
certainty had come to her and she no longer grasped at the
straw of written words. Her Bible lay always on the table
by her bed, but I know that she seldom opened it. We,
spoke little in that time. Her certainty must have been
so near that she assumed my understanding of her faith.
And, indeed, I did understand. There were moments when
I was inclined to envy my mother for the speeding of her
destiny.

And the effect of her willing resignation to a change of
which she knew neither the manner nor the result has re-
mained with me till now, and will remain with me always.
After my mother died I was plunged into the turmoil of
the world as I had never been plunged before. I have be-
come involved in what would be described as material loves,
interests and anxieties. I am at this moment intensely con-
cerned with the common movement and exigencies of life.
But I know that when the warning comes to me I shall
receive it without fear or anxiety. I shall have no con-
cern, then, with the casting of my moral account with God.
A certainty will visit me as it visited her; and I shall not,
reach out for the show of repentance nor concern myself
with any interpretation of old doctrine. That is what my
mother's faith meant to me during her last illness; and
that is the faith I have carried since she died. I have
never tried to know the Unknowable, I believe in Him, and
I am content.

After the funeral I had an interview with my uncle,
and he put my affairs before me in the clearest language.

GLADYS 91

My capital amounted to just under £200 and the furniture of
our little house in the North End Road. My mother had
been a, yearly tenant of the house and the agreement had
only another fortnight to run. No notice had been given
of our intention to leave the place, but my uncle had seen
the landlord who was willing to waive that formality on
condition that I moved my furniture as soon as possible.
My position was clear enough. All that remained was for
me to decide what I proposed to do.

That decision may appear an easy one, but I was ab-
surdly perplexed by it. I was still a schoolboy in the man-
agement of affairs. Until then everything had been done
for me; I had never even lived in rooms; the whole busi-
ness of deciding where to live seemed to me full of difficulty
and anxiety.

And I was expecting my uncle to make some offer to
provide for me. I had not seriously considered the idea
of living on the £3 a week I earned at Heaton & Baxter's.
I rather anticipated the suggestion that I should, now, marry
Gladys with as little delay as possible ; but I was confi-
dent that, in any case, my uncle would allow me an income.
I sat in the little L shaped room off the hall, that he used
as a study, and waited for the proposition to come.

Uncle David looked down at the poor little collection
of papers that represented all my personal property, rolled
out the drum of his sonorous cough and winked prodi-
giously.

"Er — hrum-rum-rum," he began, "I should advise unfur-
nished rooms as being cheaper and — hum, hum — likely to
give you the best investment for your furniture."

"For a time, at least," I said, and then by way of show-
ing that I was not quite such an idiot as my earlier silence
had made me appear I went on : "Some of it might be sold,
I think. There wouldn't be enough for an auction; per-
haps . . ."

"I will manage that for you," Uncle David rumbled,
winking solemnly at my mother's will.

I waited for a moment and, as the offer still hung fire,

92 HOUSE-MATES

I tried the broadest hint I dared to get the affair settled.

"Of course, it will only be necessary to take rooms for
a time," I said firmly. "Meanwhile I might be looking about
for a house for Gladys and myself."

Uncle David's tic became more violent than I had ever
seen it. He had to put his hand up to his face and cough
himself quiet before he could answer me.

"Yes, yes," he said. "But I made it clear — er-rhum—
from the beginning — that I expect you to be making a decent
income — before you marry Gladys."

"That job of Mr. Parkinson's is actually started at last,"
I put in, but my uncle ignored the interruption and
continued :

"I should expect you to be making an income of — of at
least £800 a year. When you see your way to that I — I
should be prepared to make a — a — a suitable settlement for
Gladys. Quite against my principles to — to — to encourage
you in the belief that work is unnecessary."

"Oh! well, of course," I said. I was annoyed by what
I regarded as another exhibition of my uncle's meanness.
"The only point is that it is very difficult to get together
a private practice when you're working in another man's
office. If I could make a start . . ."

"You've got two hundred pounds," my uncle said with
a portentous wink.

"I suppose that would be enough to start on?" I said in
the tone of one making mental calculations.

"And the commission on Parkinson's house coming to
you?" Uncle David continued.

''About £180 spread over fifteen months or so," I supplied.

"I began with less," was my uncle's only comment.

I got up with an air of having the business settled. "Well,
then, I had better see about getting an office," I said.

My uncle exchanged confidences with the papers in front
of him. "I would advise you," he said, "to— to— to limit
your ideas of luxury for the time being. Two rooms would
be— er-rhum, hum— sufficient. In a cheap neighbourhood."

That idea had never presented itself to my inmost mind.

GLADYS 93

An office was an office to me. When Geddes and Horton-
Smith had left Lincoln's Inn they had both plunged, the
former with a couple of rooms in King Street, Cheapside,
the latter into a suite of chambers in Verulam Buildings,
Grays Inn.

"Do you mean that I should have an office and sitting-
room combined?" I asked.

"I see no reason against it," my uncle said.

"Very well, then. That's settled," I returned petulantly.

"I will manage your affairs for you," my uncle added,
as I was at the door. "The proving of the will will be
a very simple affair, but I can let you have a little ready
money at once if you require it."

"Oh! that's all right. Don't bother," I said, as I went
out. . . .

I saw Gladys in the garden 'and joined her on the back
lawn. My temper was still hot and I meant, for once, to
assert myself.

"I've been talking to Uncle David," I announced, as I
sat down beside Gladys on the garden seat. "I've got two
hundred pounds and the prospect of another one hundred
and eighty from Parkinson ; and Uncle David advises me to
set up in private practice with two rooms in Bloomsbury or
somewhere !"

Gladys looked at me in her composed, thoughtful way,
and then said:

"Well? Why not? You must make a beginning some-
how, I suppose?"

"I'm perfectly ready to make a beginning," I said, and
found myself quite unable to state my grievance. I was
very conscious that I had been hardly used, but I saw no
way of suggesting to Gladys that her father was, in the
phrase of my thought, "a mean, old skunk."

"Why are you in such a temper about it, then ?" she asked.

I fell back on the obvious, which was none the less ob-
vious because it was certainly not the true reason for my
discontent.

"I thought we might be married fairly soon, now," I said,

94 HOUSE-MATES

"but Uncle David says he won't hear of it till I'm making,
£800 a year. And it's all jolly fine," I went on, working
myself up and trying to avoid the necessity for becoming
amorous or sentimental, "but, starting in two poky little
rooms like that, it won't be so easy to work up a practice.
People haven't much confidence in a chap who hasn't even
got an office of his own."

"Do you want father to keep you?" Gladys asked with
that faint, reproving pucker of her forehead I knew so
well.

"Rather not," I replied, and tried to turn the tables on
her by adding: "Are you content to wait for ten years
before we can be married ?"

She looked down at the toe of her slipper, which was
thickly embroidered with little golden beads, that shone in
the warm September sunlight. "No, I'm not," she said,
and I had no sort of suspicion that she was procrastinating,
keeping me in hand until such time as she was sure of her
game.

"Well, then !" I remarked.

She looked up at me with a sudden kindness, as if she
were, after all, genuinely sorry for my distress.

"It will be all right, old boy," she said. "We must wait
a month or two — and see. Leave it to me."

And I immediately took heart, so far as my financial
prospects were concerned, and at the same moment relapsed
into the old depression at the thought of what seemed again
to be my inevitable future. I had not been aware until
then that underneath my petulance and disappointment there
had been some glimmer of relief.

XI

I have tried to be honest in describing the kind of young
man I was when I left Hampstead and the shelter of my
mother's supervision. I was a fair specimen of a cer-
tain type, a type that exhibits the usual characteristics of

GLADYS 95

a public school boy. None of the men I knew during that
period would have described me as a mollycoddle. I had
the usual accomplishments, I was pretty good at my pro-
fession, I was not a prig. Any of my colleagues in Lin-
coln's Inn would have described me as "a good chap." And
yet when I look back, now, on the way in which I faced life
after my mother died, it seems to me that mollycoddle and
prig are the only words that fit me.

I had so little independence of mind. I should have
been content to accept an allowance from my uncle with-
out a single qualm. Worse still, I was ready to marry
Gladys for the sake of an assured future. If I sought any
excuse for that dishonesty, it must have been found in my
belief that I had a future as an architect. I could not have
disguised from myself the fact that I proposed to marry
Gladys for the sake of an income and a position; but I
forgot to examine that aspect of my intentions in my con-
centration on the plan of life that appeared then as my only
possible ambition.

I had chosen my niche, or it had been chosen for me,
and I looked for nothing more. I had a profession and
I meant to become a professional man. The things I de-
sired were a little fame, a reasonable income, and a circle
of friends who thought in much the same way as I did.
These were the factors which constituted success. Any one
of my acquaintances would have agreed in that definition.
I thought of the world as a place divided into a thousand
compartments that had a definite relation one to the other;
and the compartment that chiefly interested me was that
in which I hoped to occupy an honourable place. In that
world of my imagination everything was relatively settled
and accounted for. Science provided one with occasional
exciting discoveries ; politics with material for argument ; art
with beauty; and religion with a final refuge from all per-
plexity. It was, in fact, a nice, accommodating shop of a
world, in which everything had its appointed place ; and
if you had money enough all the doors of the shop were
open to you. I thought that you could, indeed, buy the

96 HOUSE-MATES

appearance of respect and esteem there, just as you can in an
ordinary shop.

And when I left Hampstead to take two rooms in Blooms-
bury, I had no intuition that any real change was coming
into my life. I did not go out of my old world, joyfully, to
seek adventure; but rather with a sense of depression. I
believed that Gladys would persuade her father to make her
such an allowance as would permit us to be married. I
saw with perfect distinctness a future in which my chief
annoyance would be the irk of my marital relations. I
dreaded a conflict of wills between Gladys and myself, and
the bone of our contentions would be, I believed, the prin-
ciple of my aesthetic.

More particularly I dreaded the influence of Morrison
Blake. I had forgotten my dream of marrying him to
Gladys; he had come again more than once to Ken Lodge,
but I had perceived no sign of any amorous intention on
his part. I thought that he was too deeply in love with
himself and his celebrity to bother about marriage. I had
more than once heard him congratulate himself on his
celibacy. And just at that time I should certainly have
regarded Gladys's unfaithfulness to me as a great calamity.
She stood between me and poverty. I knew, now, that my
uncle would do nothing for me, unless his daughter's hap-
piness was involved.

But Morrison Blake's intimacy with the family was a
threat to my future happiness. The Williams all believed
in him. He was in my compartment and I was not strong
enough to assert my aesthetic against his. When Gladys and
I were married she would, I believed, continually urge me
to change my style in design ; or, at least, to supple myself—
as I had already done in Parkinson's case — to the taste of
my client. And some little spark of individuality within me
was resenting that interference. The walls of my compart-
ment were being raised and strengthened; and, little as
I guessed it at the time, my unknown self was uneasily
struggling within its hardening shell. . . .

Such was the egg, labelled Wilfred Hornby, who after

GLADYS 97

one or two other tentative and forbidding experiments,
knocked at the door of 73 Keppel Street on the 23rd of
September, 1905.

It was a wet Saturday afternoon, and I was nervously
irritable.

BOOK TWO
THE INCUBATOR

BOOK TWO: THE INCUBATOR

IV
ON THE GROUND FLOOR

A MAN opened the door to me — a broad-shouldered
squat little man with a bullet head. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, but he did not look like a servant. He was
wearing what appeared to be an authentic gold watch chain
across the width of his dirty but rather ostentatious waist-
coat. He had opened the door wide and stood square across
the threshold looking at me with a suspicion that was half-
defiant.

"Vat ees your beesness?" he asked.

"I see that there are some unfurnished apartments to let
here," I said, pointing to the card propped on the meeting-
rail of the ground floor window.

The little man resisted the temptation to follow the in-
dication of my hand and continued to stare at me. I
noticed that his left eye had a tendency to look absently
over my shoulder while its fellow kept watch.

"Ach ! Zat is so," he agreed, making no attempt to move.

"I'm looking for two unfurnished rooms," I returned,
"but if you don't want to let yours ..." I was turning
away when he stepped back into the hall and said :

"Come een. I vill show zem to you."

I hesitated. I was annoyed by his manner, and had a
foolish wish to take some sort of revenge upon him. "Oh !

101

102 HOUSE-MATES

It doesn't matter in the least," I said, shrugging my
shoulders.

The little man's answering shrug showed me how feeble
a thing mine had been.

"Zat ees as you like, of course," he said. "You reeng
and go away. Eet happen so more times zan I can say."

"Are they on the ground floor?" I asked.

"Zey are on the groundt floor," he said.

"I'm afraid they might be rather dark," I said. "I should
want to use one as a drawing office."

"So ? An offeece ? You are zen an architect, perhaps ?"

When I had admitted that I was an architect, the little
man finally dropped his last air of suspicion, and I no-
ticed that his left eye steadied itself and looked at me with
a strict attention to business. "Ach, come and see ze
apartment," he urged me. "Zey are very fine apartment
and cheap. You would have a sign on the post, yes ?"

"Have a what?" I asked.

He smiled at my dulness, came forward and smacked the
door frame in a friendly way. "A sign of your name and
profession," he said. "In brass, yes?" And he indicated
an oblong with a gesture of both hands.

"Oh! a plate? Yes, I suppose I should have a plate on
the door. Do you object to that?" I asked.

"No, no," he assured me with considerable vigour. "I
desire a sign on the door. Eet look very well, zat. In
brass, yes ?"

He was ecstatic over the beauty of the rooms and, in-
deed, he had some excuse. No. 73 was one of the older
houses that went with the others when Keppel Street was
demolished, but it had a claim to consideration. It might
very well have come within the recognition of Blake as
having been designed and built slightly previous to the
French Revolution. The window was rather good. It was
in two lights with a heavy architrave and the upper sashes
were divided with heavy sash-bars into quite decently pro-
portioned oblongs. The cornice was good, too, in that style,
and its heaviness was in keeping with the height of the

ON THE GROUND FLOOR 103

room; but what chiefly interested me was a great semi-
circular niche in the wall facing the window. This recess
was about twelve feet wide and six deep, framed with
squat, Ionic pilasters that carried the bold mouldings of the
arch. It was all a plaster sham, of course, and beneath con-
tempt as art from my point of view ; but I could not deny
that it was effective as decoration. The mantelpiece was
later, and too small for the general scale of the room; but
the door was original with solid bolection moulded panels
and brass furniture. The place looked clean, and its bare-
ness was oddly mitigated by two vases and a large clock, in
soapstone, conventionally arranged on the mantelpiece. The
vases were copies of an Etruscan model and the clock sim-
ple enough in design to pass muster. Also it was going
and set to the right time.

"Those are not included, of course," I said, pointing to
the mantelpiece.

The little man put his head on one side, and shrugged
his right shoulder. "Zat ees as you vill," he said. "I can
move zem or not move zem, as you like. Zey are very fine
apartment. You take zem, yes?"

I rather thought that I should take them. The bedroom
was more commonplace, but that did not matter. I had
taken a liking to the front room.

"What about re-papering?" I asked. The sitting-room
paper was beastly — pale pink flowers on a faded yellow
ground.

"Ah! Zat!" he said, and I saw the pursing of his red
mouth through the thicket of his moustache and beard. "No,
no !" he went on. "I cannot move the papers."

"But you wouldn't mind my doing it ?" I asked.

"You not like ze paper?" he said. "It fade itself." And
he rubbed it thoughtfully with a broad and dirty thumb.
"Vat paper you like?" he asked.

There was a picture rail about nine feet from the
ground, a poor, Victorian thing as I guessed, but fortu-
nately in the right place, not too near the cornice. "I

104 HOUSE-MATES

should like a brown paper with no pattern," I said. "Not
too dark ; and I should distemper the frieze dead white."

The little man nodded. "Very nice," he said. "You are
an artist. I see zat, and you like ze apartment; but, no, I
could not afford ze new papers. It ees not possible. I am
unhappy to lose you, you are an artist, and zere is also ze
sign on the post, but I have not ze house now for so long.
For one year more only I have ze house, now. Ze lees
give himself up."

I did not believe that I should want the rooms for so
long as that. I looked upon this plan as merely a tempo-
rary expedient until Gladys and I were married, but I felt
that I could not ask Geddes and Horton-Smith to see me
there unless my ideas of decoration were carried out. I
have no doubt, now, that my little landlord would have
done anything I had asked him. He was merely bargain-
ing, preparing the way by his reluctance for an increased
rent. But I was as innocent a bird as ever set out to engage
in business of that kind and I accepted his statement as
final.

"Well, look here," I said. "I think I'll take these rooms
and do the decoration myself. But what about the rent?
I can't afford very much."

The little man again congratulated me fervently on my
artistic abilities before he said: "Ze rent is nussing. As
I tell you, ze lees run away and I take nussing to prefer
a lodger." (I never knew such a man to leap at what he
supposed to be an English idiom.) "Ze rent ?" He shrugged
his ^shoulders again and made a gesture of immense resig-
nation with his hands. "I take one pound each veek," he
concluded with the despairing air of a man who accepts the
awful inevitable.

"Does that include attendance?" I asked. I had expected
him to ask more.

"Viz attendance," he admitted gloomily, as one who had
been condemned and no longer cared to discuss the details
of his fate.

"Oh! and I say, is there a bathroom?" I added.

ON THE GROUND FLOOR 105

"Zere ees a barze, you find heem on the entresol," he
said dejectedly.

He had, however, recovered his hope in life by the time
I had paid a deposit of a week's rent; he gave me a card
with his name, Karl Pferdminger, engraved on it in flourish-
ing italics.

As we were in the passage-hall a woman came down-
stairs, nodded to my future landlord, and stared enquiringly
at me as she passed. She was young and distinctly good-
looking in a smart, rather highly-coloured style, and I
looked after her as she went out.

When I turned my head I found that Pferdminger was
regarding me with a hesitating smile — I have seen the same
kind of a smile on a would-be propitiatory dog — and his left
eye was again absentmindedly forgetful of its partner's
business.

"She live here," he said. "Mees Viting. She ees an
actress."

I nodded carelessly. I had no intention of becoming in-
volved with the other tenants of No. 73 Keppel Street.
"Are there many other lodgers?" I asked.

"Zere ees some ozzers," he said. "Gentilmen, also."

His last word to me was a reminder about the "sign on
the post."

ii

I made the announcement of my success publicly, at din-
ner, the next day. I described my future sitting-room-
orfice in detail. I was warm with the pride of new own-
ership; and I had a cowardly hope that I might propitiate
Gladys by praising a piece of Georgian architecture. I was
conscious of doing something broad-minded and generous.

Gladys responded graciously, but my uncle had one or
two questions to put. The first one was as to the rent,
and when I told him that I was to pay twenty shillings a
week for two unfurnished rooms, he shook his head. "I
presume they are in one of the Squares?" he asked.

106 HOUSE-MATES

I had not mentioned the name of the street. I had pre-
ferred the longer designation of Bloomsbury which had the
air of being a fitting address for a young architect. But
my temper rose at my uncle's tone of reproof. Since that
business interview of ours in his study I resented his inter-
ference with my affairs.

"No! they aren't," I said. "They're in Keppel Street."

My uncle looked down at his plate and winked profoundly.
"Very risky," he commented. "Did you make sure that
it was a respectable house?"

I blushed. All the enigmas of Pferdminger's behaviour;
his suspicion1 of me at my first appearance, his relief to
find that I was a professional man, his anxiety to have
a brass plate on the door, all these things and the oddities
of his manner were instantly explained. In my innocence
I had looked no farther than the fact of his nationality for
any solution of his queerness, but at Uncle David's sug-
gestion I knew beyond all doubt that No. 73 Keppel Street
was not a respectable house.

"Why shouldn't it be?" was all the defence I found.

"That street has a very bad name," my uncle said. "Two
houses there have been raided within the past few months."

"Oh! Wilfred, do be careful where you go," Gladys put
in; and I believe it was her speech rather than my uncle's
that put my back up.

"Of 'course," I said. "The place looked perfectly all
right, but- 1 shall make enquires before I definitely move
in."

"It would be advisable," my uncle said gravely, and the
subject was dropped for the time. Gladys, however, re-
verted to it later in the afternoon, and took it upon herself
to reprimand me for my carelessness. "You are so slack
about some things," was one of her remarks and it might
have stood for the text of her sermon.

I endured her fault-finding with exemplary patience. I
was wondering what she would say if I suddenly confessed
my misdemeanours with Nellie Roberts. I was hardening
myself against reproof just then, and one effect of that

ON THE GROUND FLOOR 107

resolve to endure was an alteration of my scale of social
values. There had been a time when the thought of Nellie
Roberts had seemed a gross outrage on the purity of Ken
Lodge ; but that afternoon I was inclined to find excuses, if
not virtues, in my old- sins. Gladys was teaching me to
resent the formal disciplines of society. Like many women
she had a strong vein of the schoolmistress in her.

And some instinctive reaction against the flat certainty
of her social dogmas was undoubtedly working in me when
I went down to Keppel Street after tea the same day — to
make those further enquiries I had promised.

Pferdminger was not there and the door was opened
by his wife, a tall, thin, despairing woman, who evidently
spoke from the book of her husband's instructions.

"Oh! no!" she said — it appeared that she was English —
"we never take any one without making sure. We have
a Miss Whiting on the first floor — over you, she is — an
actress, but most respectable."

"Oh! that's all right, then," I returned.

"Perfectly respectable we've always been," Mrs. Pferd-
minger repeated without the least conviction or fervour, and
added, "My husband told you we've only got the house
for another year?" There was an accent of dull relief
in her voice as she asked the question, that settled any last
doubt I might still have had.

But I was determined to move into the house, neverthe-
less. I was even a little elated. I was not sure that I had
not some wild idea of making the most of what I believed
to be the short remaining period of my liberty. I wondered
if "the Viting," as I called her to myself, was indeed in
any kind of way connected with the stage. I rather hoped
that she might be. The stage gave a flavour of romance.
I had never spoken to an actress.

in

I moved into my new rooms the following Monday week.
After my preliminary instructions, I left everything to

108 HOUSE-MATES

a man I knew in Berners Street. He was the head of a
firm of decorators with which Heaton & Baxter had often
done business; and I could trust him to do things decently.
He wanted me to have a heavier picture rail put in and
one or two other things, but I resisted those temptations.
I had the excuse that the sitting-room was to be my office,
and ought to represent my taste in decoration, but I had
to buy a lot of new furniture and it seemed foolish to
spend money on a place that was probably coming down
in a year's time. I was sorry about the picture-rail. Be-
sides being too light for the style of the room, it cut very
awkwardly into the moulding of the arch that enclosed the
recess.

I invited Geddes and Horton-Smith to come round on the
Thursday after I had moved in, and they both agreed that
the front room was quite effective. The old sideboard from
Little Milton that had been such a clumsy obstacle in the
North End Road house went into the recess and was quite
in keeping with the style of the pilasters and the arch. And
one or two other solid pieces we had saved from the sale
of the vicarage furniture carried out the general feeling of
solidity and mass.

"Filthily Georgian, of course," was Geddes's summary,
"but it's rather good of its kind. You've got the idea of
leisure and space anyway. And he went up and down
the unencumbered aisles on either side of my centre table,
with his queer dancing steps, and then backwards and
forwards in the clear space between the table and the recess.
"You've sort of modernised it, too, Hornby," he went on.
"You've taken an old idea and done it better."

"He's let his books out, for one thing," put in Horton-
Smith, and pointed to the long low book-case that the
Berners Street firm had made for me. "In the proper
Georgian house there wouldn't have been any books to
speak of, and if there had, they'd have been behind glass
doors."

"Oh! yes, Hornby's a modern, all right," agreed Geddes,

ON THE GROUND FLOOR 109

still prancing up and down. "That's what I mean he — he
has individualised bad material."

That point of view did not greatly appeal to me at the
time. No doubt I had individualised my room, but I had
done it unconsciously. Neither Geddes nor Horton-Smith
gave any expression to my real feeling about this new
lodging place of mine; and I was too shy to be articulate
about it.

For what that room meant to me was not artistic satis-
faction but release. For the first time in my life I was
aware of my own independence. I felt bigger and stronger
in Keppel Street. I realised a sense of power in myself. In
two more days another fetter would have been thrown off.
I was leaving Heaton & Baxter on the following Satur-
day, and then I should have leisure to do my own work.

I only had a few "full-size" drawings still to make for
Parkinson's house, but I was full of plans. I had ideas
for two or three articles on design that I was fairly con-
fident would be accepted by The Studio; and I meant,
now, to go in for a competition on my own. I believed
that in my earlier collaborations the fanaticism of Geddes
had hampered me.

The sense of independence was the dominant motive in
the first two or three weeks of my new life. I had not
changed my ambitions for the future. I still looked forward
to marrying my cousin, and to the enclosing of myself
within the little circle of the successful professional man.
But meanwhile I was becoming more contented with the
idea of making my own way, and as a consequence I lost
much of my resentment towards my uncle. . . .

Gladys and Aunt Agatha came to tea with me on the
following Sunday afternoon. They both approved my
sitting-room-office; and Gladys was particularly charming.
She talked to me as she used to talk before our engage-
ment ; and I remembered the Eastbourne holiday with quite
a glow of sentiment. I felt hopeful that evening. I be-
lieved that our marriage might after all be a success.

THE life of the house began its overtures to me through
my sitting-room window. I had arranged my draw-
ing board on two stained wood trestles and I stood at the
window to work. The light was quite good. My room
faced north, and although the street was not wide, the
houses immediately opposite were only three stories high.
For dark days I had two incandescent gas burners with
shades. The house was not wired for electric light.

The life of the street did not seduce my attention after
the first day or two — I was interested in my work and
was not afraid of distractions. But by degrees, and almost
against my will, my attention was drawn to the life of the
house in which I lived.

I heard the footsteps coming downstairs and along the
hall, and then the opening and closing of the front door.
And inevitably, as it seemed, I always glanced up to watch
the departure of my unknown house-mate.

The early morning traffic was soon resolved into an
orderly routine. I came to know the steps and the methods
of the four men who left the house between eight-thirty and
ten o'clock. Three of them turned east when they went
out, and two of those three always left together. The fourth
turned westwards towards the Tottenham Court Road, and
passed under my window. He was a small, plumpish man,
with hair that must have been prematurely grey for he
did not appear to be more than thirty. I guessed him to

no

THE REST OF THE HOUSE 111

be a German. On wet days he sometimes wore a bowler
hat with his frock coat I was not interested in him, but
he always looked up at my window as he passed. He did
not go out until half-past nine and I had begun work by
then ; and when I had learned his habits, I used to step back
into the room to avoid meeting his eye. I knew that if I
did not he would begin by smiling at me, and that then
we should soon be exchanging nods ; and after that I might
have to speak to him if I met him in the hall or the street,
and so it would come to having him in my rooms. One
may go on nodding to a man in a railway carriage, or
through a window for years without taking any further
notice of him; but if one meets the same man afterwards
in new circumstances, it is as if one had suddenly dis-
covered a friend. And certainly I did not desire that plump,
ill-dressed young fellow-lodger of mine for a friend. I
imagined myself to be his social superior.

If the morning departure of those four men had marked
an ebb which receded and left me free from distraction
until the uncertain flow began to return at six o'clock, I
should have remained forever detached, stranded high and
dry, as it were, on the beach of my professional distinction.
But that preliminary receding was no more than an uninter-
esting preface to the life of the day. I have thought without
consideration of the morning signs as a tide, indicative of
the broad human movement from west to east that sets
with such regularity each week day. That metaphor fails,
however, when I look back at the irregular swirls and cur-
rents that I presently began to watch with increasing in-
terest.

The first of those other lives that aroused my curiosity
was presented to me as a tall, thin, clean-shaven man, who
wore a soft hat and walked with a stoop of the shoulders.
I originally put him down as an artist. He had dark hair
that he wore rather long, and a lock of it often escaped
from under the brim of his hat and trailed across his fore-
head. His hours were quite uncertain except on Thursday,
on which day he left the house about eleven, and returned

112 HOUSE-MATES

carrying a parcel sometime during the afternoon. On other
days he might stay in the house until four or five o'clock,
or not go out at all, unless it were that I missed hearing
or seeing him. But I knew unmistakably the sound of
his going. He always stopped in the hall and went through
the letters that accumulated during the day on the yellow
oak table that stood against the wall, under the gas jet. It
was not easy to read in that hall until the gas was lit. The
only light came through the semicircular fan over the
hall-door; and the thick wooden bars of the fan impeded
some of the light, and the remains of the coloured glass
most of the rest. The fan had originally been glazed in
dark blue, and only those panes which had been broken
and replaced permitted the passage of a thin straggle of
white light. The business of sorting the letters on the
hall table was often a long one. I do not think I often
missed hearing him.

"The Viting," as I still thought of her, seldom went out
until the evening. I only saw her three times in the first
two weeks, once through the window in the early after-
noon; the next time in the evening, an illuminating vision
to which I shall refer later; and once when I deliberately
went out into the hall as I heard her coming downstairs —
she cut me dead on that occasion.

But there were still three other people, all women, whom
I came to know by sight. The capacity of that warren
was truly wonderful.

II

I am covered with a hot shame, even now, when I re-
member my inferences concerning those other three women.
I have been tempted to omit any account of my horrible
blindness in this particular; for after the lapse of years I
still blush uncomfortably at the remembrance; I feel
ashamed as if I had been guilty of some unpleasant sin.
And yet I can find good excuse for my blunder.

The nasty truth is that during the first week or two of

THE REST OF THE HOUSE 113

my observations through the window I imagined those other
three women to be following the same occupation as Miss
Rose Whiting. I had come to Keppel Street prepared to
find it a harbour for prostitution — my suspicion concern-
ing the important lodger who occupied the rooms above
me was entirely confirmed within ten days of the time I
arrived. And my expectation hypnotised me. I took no
trouble to examine appearances or weigh probabilities. I
was an infernal young fool who leapt to unwarranted con-
clusions without a particle of evidence. But I cannot write
of my mistake without losing my temper; and the object
of my indignation is that smug, would-be professional young
whelp who stared out of his window. I can regard other
aspects of myself in that period with a contemptuous toler-
ance; but that short phase of the young Wilfred Hornby
fills me with an irritation and disgust I cannot control.

However, I will begin by giving an account of the inci-
dent that confirmed my suspicion of "the Viting." I want
to convince myself that I had some excuse.

I had gone to the window and pulled up the blind about
eleven o'clock one night. I had no especial purpose be-
yond looking at the weather. It had been raining all day
and the street still gleamed in the lamp light, although I
guessed from what I could see of the sky that the clouds had
broken and the moon was shining. I was not thinking of
my fellow-lodgers just then, but I peered down the street
when I heard the aprons of a hansom clap together a few
doors off. The cab drove away immediately and then I
could see the man and woman who had alighted from it talk-
ing together. I drew back as they came past my window. I
had recognised "the Viting," and I did not want her to
think J was spying, but I heard the click of her latchkey
and immediately afterwards her voice, making it very clear
indeed that she was saying good-night. When she had gone
upstairs I looked out again and saw the man walking
up and down on the opposite pavement.

I wondered what he was doing. He had an air that was
half furtive and half impatient. He kept looking up at the

114 HOUSE-MATES

window over mine, and once he evidently saw me, and
frowned and moved away as if he were afraid of being
recognised. I did not move from my post of observation.
I think T had some unlikely suspicion of his purpose. I
was certainly astonished when he walked boldly across the
road, stared a moment's defiance at me and opened our
front door with a latchkey. I heard him go upstairs with
the surreptitious tread of a man who attempts to evade
notice. And I heard "the Viting's" door close a few seconds
later.

I understood, then, that she had lent him her latchkey,
and I had no more doubts as to her profession. The police
were levying blackmail very freely at that time, and Miss
Whiting's trick to avoid suspicion was, as I afterwards
learnt, a concession to the explicit instructions of our land-
lord, which were : "No men in ze house. In ze street
outside it ees all as you like, but in ze house, No."

After that incident I was on the lookout for further in-
timations ; and I must admit that I hoped to find evidence.
I make no apologies for that. After the kind of home life
that had always been mine, this plunge into what I consid-
ered the lurid wickedness of Keppel Street was immensely
thrilling. I wanted to be something more than a spectator,
and yet I was afraid. I realised that this occasional pas-
sion towards adventure was only a part of me, and that
I dared not enter the mysterious garden of pleasure un-
less I were sure of a way of escape. I was intimidated by
the thought that Miss Whiting might come to visit me at
her own pleasure and not at mine. Nevertheless I was
tempted. For some reason this game appeared so much
more fascinating than my experiences with Nellie Roberts.
I pictured entertaining Miss Whiting as a respectable guest
in my own rooms. Loneliness excited my imagination to
lurid possibilities.

It was a sudden impulse to drown the tantalisation of
thought in reality that sent me out into the hall when I
heard "the Viting" coming downstairs a few days after
the adventure of the latchkey. I was very nervous but

THE REST OF THE HOUSE 115

I summoned up enough courage to look at her as she
passed me. She returned my look with a contemptuous
stare. Perhaps her illicit visitor had reported my vigil at
the window. I went back to my sitting-room, humiliated
and puzzled.

ill

The first of the other three women I soon came to know
by sight was rather stout, and I judged her to be approach-
ing forty, but she was handsome still and walked with a
certain self-confidence and dignity. She was always wear-
ing a tremendous fur coat, rather shabby with age, I fancied,
but it looked impressive. Her movements were too erratic
to suggest any particular routine of occupation, and I do
not blame myself severely for my entirely erroneous esti-
mate of her virtue.

The other two almost invariably went out together. I
saw them first on the second day of my freedom from
attendance at the office in Lincoln's Inn; and for about a
fortnight their habits appeared quite regular. They left the
house a little before eleven and returned some time between
five and seven-thirty. The shorter of the two was rather
plain, with dull eyes and a clever forehead ; she would have
had a good figure if she had taken any trouble with it.

Her friend I cannot describe in this detached impersonal
way. I only know that one morning she looked up at me
as she passed, turning her head with a little quick smile
that was not meant for me. Her eyes were bright with the
life of youth ; eyes that displayed at the same moment both
her sincerity and the eagerness of her spirit. And I did
not guess that her smile was not for me. I was unexpectedly
flattered and thrilled. I had no time to return her smile.
She looked up with one of her eager impulsive movements
and looked away again. But she left me changed.

I thrust the thought of Miss Whiting from me as if she
had been in the last stages of leprosy. I forgot Adela Lyn-
neker, who had until then filled some blank space of my

116 HOUSE-MATES

desires, even after her inexplicable elopement with the vil-
lage carpenter. And I came back to the thought of my
cousin Gladys with a new feeling of despair. She appeared
to me, then, as representing all that was tame and dull; all
that was in some way stale and exhausted.

That one gay little smile was indeed responsible for many
effects upon me. It certainly added a new tensity to my
observations of the household. I knew by then the step for
which I waited; but every time the door clanged I hoped
that I had been mistaken, that despite the irrefutable evi-
dence of my ears I should see the desired figure pass my
window and that she would once more turn her head and
look up at me.

She never did. And after the first fortnight of my watch-
ing she changed her routine. Her morning departures be-
came inexplicably irregular, but for one week she and her
friend left the house every night soon after seven and re-
turned a little before midnight.

It was then I wondered and made a fool of myself ; but
before that I had been up to Ken Lodge and had received
the present of my freedom to love whomsoever I would.

IV

I did not go up to Ken Lodge that Sunday morning with
any intention of breaking off my engagement to Gladys. I
was still held in the thrall of my conventional ambitions.
The movement of my thoughts towards Miss Whiting and
afterwards towards the unknown girl who had smiled as
she passed my window, was indicative of nothing more
than a desire to take advantage of the little liberty that
remained to me. I had formulated some kind of rash de-
termination to taste once more adventure before I settled
down for life. That resolve would have appeared very
reprehensible to my uncle and aunt and cousin, but as I
went up to see them I had no feeling of guilt. Something
in me was breaking loose, and the rest of me was temporar-
ily incapable of criticism.

THE REST OF THE HOUSE 117

I went up to Hampstead after morning service. I had a
standing invitation to join the Williams at church and go
back with them to dinner, and I felt that I was making a
mild bid for independence by cutting the first half of the
programme.

The parlour-maid who opened the door gave me the
smile proper to an expected visitor. "I think Miss Gladys
is in the drawing-room," she said, and I relieved her from
further attendance on me with the nod of one who was
quite at home in the house.

I must have made some noise crossing the parquet, and
hanging up my coat in the lobby, and I remember that I
had a cold and blew my nose quite audibly just outside the
drawing-room door. Moreover, I had been standing in-
side the room for one of those indefinitely short but con-
sciously measurable periods of time, before Gladys dis-
engaged herself from Blake's arm and turned to greet me.
He may have been too engrossed in his own affairs to
notice my entrance — he was talking, of course; he was al-
ways talking — but I am quite sure that Gladys was pre-
pared for my entrance, and had preferred to break the
news to me in that way rather than by any formal announce-
ment.

As for me, I was too unprepared and too conventionally
minded to understand at once the real significance of the
embrace I had just seen. I had forgotten my old dream
of release by this very agent, and I was confusedly finding
some excuse for Gladys; trying to think of Blake's atti-
tude as in some way parental — he must have been nearly
fifty.

And then I saw that Gladys was covered with a well-
assumed confusion.

"I — I thought you were alone," was the idiotic excuse I
made, as if I were the culpable person. I had, indeed, a
sense of having been guilty of intrusion.

Blake laughed self-consciously and my cousin took her
cue from that, subsided gracefully into an armchair and hid
her eyes. I have a distinct impression at this moment

118 HOUSE-MATES

of 'her white, rather bony hands, pressed against her face.

"Oh! well, well," Blake was saying with the nearest at-
tempt at propitiation he ever showed towards me. "The
truth of the matter is, young man, that your cousin has
changed her mind. I daresay I took her by surprise." No
doubt he flattered himself that the initiative was all his
own.

"Do you mean to say that she has ..." I began and
stopped because I could think of no phrase but "she has
chucked me for you," a phrase that I instinctively rejected
as unworthy of the occasion.

"Oh! well, these things happen sometimes. No need to
make a scene," Blake said pompously. He was obviously
bursting with pride at having, by his own personal attrac-
tion, snatched a unique possession from another collector.
If he had ever had a moment's doubt as to the desirability
of Gladys as a property, my claim to prior ownership must
have decided him at once and forever.

"Very rough on you, no doubt," he went on and paused ;
perhaps to reject the too blatant expression of what must
have been in my mind; the plain inference that I could
never have had a chance after he entered the market. "But,
well, there you are!" he said, "your cousin will tell you,
perhaps, how sorry she is not to have found out her mis-
take before . . ."

I believe he continued to talk in the same strain for two
or three minutes. One cannot gauge time in such situa-
tions as that. And I was only half aware of him; another
side of my mind was bubbling with a mischievous joy at my
escape — a joy that I regarded from the point of view of
Wilfred Hornby in his best Sunday clothes, as quite dis-
tinctly the wrong emotion in those circumstances.

"You needn't have done it in such a rotten hole and cor-
ner sort of way," was my long postponed verdict on the
affair, and then I gathered courage from the enunciation
of what seemed obviously the proper sentiment, and tried
to shut Blake down by adding, "I ought to have been told."

"Pooh, pooh!" Blake said. "I only spoke to Miss Wil-

THE REST OF THE HOUSE 119

Hams this morning — five minutes ago — for the first time."
And as an amateur in love, who was so superbly profes-
sional in all other things, he found it necessary to add "the
recognition of each other's feelings — er — overwhelmed us."

"You infernal ass," was the unspoken comment of my
bubbling sub-consciousness.

"I ought to have been told," was the stubborn repetition
that my conventional self found appropriate.

And then Gladys came out from the shelter of Blake's
importance. "Oh! Wilfred, how could I tell you when I
didn't know myself?" she asked, and with an ungainly
movement that reminded me of her tennis, she made a
little bobbing run past me and left the game to her new
lover.

"Now, be sensible," was his prompt opening, delivered
apparently with the certainty of one who usually found
that stroke unplayable.

I am glad that I stood up to him. I think some escape
of gas from the secret ebullition that was going on within
me helped to inspire the expression of my grievance. What-
ever the cause, as soon as Blake and I were alone, I managed
to find a statement, however boyish and impertinent.

"Oh ! of course she changed her mind," I said. "You're
rich and famous in a sort of way, I suppose. I don't blame
her. But I think it was a dirty game of yours ; coming in
and — and outbidding me."

"You'll be sorry for this, Hornby," he threatened me;
and his curly moustache bristled truculently in response to
the snarl of his lip.

"Bosh !" I said. "I'm talking to you in the only language
you understand. This is just another of your dirty tricks ;
the kind of trick you play in your business."

He scowled furiously, but he had no real courage. His
temper was of the kind that finds vent in breaking a not
too precious piece of furniture. I had at least four inches
the advantage of him in height; I was young and active,
and he judged me to be deliriously angry. His scowl no

120 HOUSE-MATES

more intimidated me' than the bark of a French poodle
attempting a dignified retreat.

"My good fellow . . ." he began.

"Yes, I hope I am," I retorted, snatching at the sugges-
tion, "and that's just what you're not. You don't play
the game." All my grievance had found vent in my con-
tempt for him and his professional methods. "You're little
better than a thief as a matter of fact," I went on. "You
cheat people in business, and now you've cheated me by
buying Gladys over my head. You needn't imagine that
she's in love with you any more than she was in love with
me. She doesn't know what love means any more than you
do. ..." I felt the anti-climax coming; I had been lured
into a bad opening ; and I concluded too boyishly and spoiled
my effect.

"You're just that," I shouted, "an infernal swindler."

And then, as I turned quickly to make a passionate, door-
slamming retreat, I nearly knocked over my uncle who was
coming quickly up the room behind me.

"W — Wilfred," he stammered furiously without an in-
troductory cough, and nearly winked himself off his feet.

My long habit of respect for his authority checked me
slightly, but I pushed past him. "He'll explain," I said with
a gesture of contempt towards Blake.

The collector had his head back and was most unneces-
sarily curling his moustache as I got out of the room.

It was no kind of dramatic triumph for me, but I felt
triumphant as I marched down Heath Street. My face
was burning and I felt as if my eyes flashed defiance of
the whole world. •

I had not completely recovered when I reached Keppel
Street, and it was the last tumultuous intoxication of self-
assertion that betrayed me when I unfortunately met my
lady of the smile, and her friend, coming out of 73.

I raised my hat to them and grinned.

THE REST OF THE HOUSE

I have it on the best possible authority that my grin
was one of the worst kind, ingratiating, oily, altogether
contemptible ; so I had better put the horror on record and
leave it unmodified. I believe I have exaggerated the dis-
gust of it in my own mind. I have writhed so often at the
recollection that my smile and my attitude at the critical
moment have been crystallised into a vision of something
obscene and revolting. But I must leave any mitigation
of the general impression to those who can find for me an
excuse that I will not proffer on my own behalf. For
my part, I know that I deserved the snubbing I received.

It may be that that reply was chiefly responsible for the
complete abasement I have confessed. Her look had pity
mixed with its scorn. Her companion blushed and ducked
her head in the common manner of the timid shop-girl;
but she to whom my leer was addressed met my eyes with
perfect self-possession. And something in her pitying dis-
dain seemed to place me as a horrid little cad who ought
to have known better. For one instant I became the thing
she had seen. I wilted. I believe if I had had the power
of speech I should have murmured, "Beg pardon, I'm
sure."

My recovery a couple of minutes later touched the op-
posite extreme. I paced my sitting-room in a fury. I saw
a million excuses for myself, but none for her. I found
such description for her as "vain little fool" ; I accused her
of putting on airs; I hated her with all the vehemence I
could muster.

I am not sure how long I managed to keep my resent-
ment against her at that high defensive level. I know that
I re-stimulated my anger until I could no longer respond
to my determined consideration of her iniquity in first smil-
ing at me and then "cocking her head in the air as though
she had been insulted." But by tea-time (I had had no
dinner) I had fallen into a mood of depression — all my

HOUSE-MATES

worldly prospects were apparently wrecked beyond re-
covery. I had outraged my uncle's sense of propriety;
the scheming, artificial Gladys had thrown me over for
her own deliberate ends; and I had crowned the day by
making an ass of myself. I had come to that admission by
five o'clock.

I had a sort of high tea at the Vienna Cafe, but when I
went up to the first floor afterwards, the atmosphere of the
place revolted me. I went out and walked up and down
Oxford Street for a time but when, near the Circus, a
woman smiled at me I shuddered and took refuge in a
bus.

I was free, now, but that particular form of celebrating
my liberty had lost all attraction for me, and I finally
slunk back to Keppel Street, and tried to find distraction in
literature.

Not until I was going to bed did the first gleam of con-
solation come to me; and then I reflected with faint glee
that Blake had, for once in his life, been done.

I wonder if he has ever appreciated the irony of the fact
that the show piece of his collection is a fraud?

I saw them at a private view just before the War; and
Gladys bowed and would probably have spoken to me if
I had given her an opportunity. She had changed very
little. I thought she looked thinner and a trifle sharper,
that was all. She had her little boy with her ; a peaky child
with the thinnest legs I've ever seen.

VI
THE NIGHT OF THE ROW

THE experiences of that Sunday had an immediate ef-
fect upon me, but at the time I was quite mistaken as to
the nature of the change that was working underneath the
appearance. All the week that followed was devoted to
strenuous work. I understood that I was not one of Life's
favourite children. I could count no longer either upon
my uncle's influence or his financial assistance, and I wilfully
decided that he had always disliked me. But while I set
my teeth and began the effort of practical training by which
I hoped to win the little race that appeared as the only
goal of my youth, I made the immense mistake of begin-
ning in a wrong spirit.

During that week I was full of resentment against the
world. I felt that I had been thwarted and impeded. I
worked savagely, obstinately; and my mind was cramped
and stubborn. I did not answer the letter I received from
Gladys on Monday evening, and I wasted considerable time
in dodging back from the window whenever I heard any
one leaving the house. Gladys was comparatively negli-
gible— if she had thrown me over on the ground of our
incompatible temperaments, I should have been relieved and
grateful — but against the girl who had so effectively snubbed
me on the doorstep I entertained a definite rancour. Pres-
ently I meant to have my revenge, but in the meantime I
did not want to see her or to let her see me.

The odds were too heavily against me in any play be-

123

HOUSE-MATES

tween my room and the street. She could walk past my
window with a contemptuous disregard of my presence,
and I had no possible means of retaliation. I knew that
she would not see me. I should never have the satisfac-
tion of appearing too engrossed in my work to look up.
But I believed that my absence from the window must be
noticed. She might never look up, but her friend with the
shy mouse-coloured eyes would surely peep and report
that I was not there. In time — I dwelt on that idea of long
abstention, and in some moods I knew in a muddled way
that I meant abstention, that I was denying myself the
desire to look at her again — in time, I thought, I shall have
recovered enough dignity to venture revenge; I shall find
an opportunity to return her contempt. I never had a doubt
that they would remember me. I was too important a per-
son in that house. My brass plate shone in unchallenged
splendour at the entrance ; and my landlord regarding it, I
believe, as the patent of his respectability polished my sign
every day with his own hands. No one could enter 73 Kep-
pel Street without the staring reminder that the house
was primarily the residence of Wilfred Hornby A.R.I.B.A.,
Architect and Surveyor. And I was equally sure that there
could be no doubt of my identity.

I was right in most of my surmises. Indeed, in only
one particular was I ridiculously, grotesquely wrong. Cher-
ishing the thought of my own position, I believed that my
absence from the window would finally establish my dig-
nity ; while the truth was that two young women were smil-
ing at my humiliation. T.hey thought that I was, very
properly, ashamed of myself. . . .

I sometimes wonder, now, whether I should not have de-
veloped on the same lines, even if I had married Gladys
and won to my old ambition of, say, a house standing in
its own grounds and the decent complement of servants that
proclaims a man's position. The process might have been
slower, but surely, I think, some influence must have worked
upon me sooner or later, or some accident would have hap-
pened to crack the shell of my complacency.

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 125

But now that I have re-entered the life of that house in
Keppel Street, and am imaginatively living again in the
world of its stirring insistence, I feel that no other experi-
ence could ever have moved me. The shock and adventure
might have come to me by another road, but not the de-
mand to associate myself with the common interests of
humanity. Even during that week of obstinate hostility
to one member of the household, I was aware of something
that was drawing me towards intercourse with my house-
mates. I remember meeting the man whom I had mistaken
for an artist, and being moved by a .sudden desire to speak
to him. I came in at the front door while he was peering
at the letters on the hall table, and he looked up with a
smile as if he would thank me for the gift of light I had
brought him. I bowed stiffly and went past him into my
own room, but I wanted to speak to him. Inside me the
chicken was pecking at a shell just too strong, as yet, to
yield to those cramped struggles.

Then came the end of the week and the great affair of
Saturday night.

II

Oddly enough Geddes was with me that evening, and
Geddes remains — still — the most shell-bound of my ac-
quaintances. His wife had been ill and had gone to stay
with her mother in Hertfordshire, and he had been kept
in town by a meeting at the Institute. He came in about
half -past nine — "to talk a little shop," as he explained, but
he never talked anything else.

It must have been after eleven when the row began. I
had heard Miss Whiting come in a few minutes before,
and it struck me, then, that she must be in a bad humour.
She banged the door so furiously that even Geddes paused
a moment in the middle of a disquisition on the advantages
of a new fire-proof partition material he had just dis-
covered.

I was trying to concentrate my interest on his analysis

126 HOUSE-MATES

when I heard the dim beginnings of the altercation upstairs.
I knew, at once, that the merest echo of it was reaching
me — "73" was a well-built house — and I strained my atten-
tion to hear more. That muffled shouting had the urgent
quality that gives one a feeling of excited uneasiness.

Geddes saw that I was not listening to him, and merci-
fully cut off his string of technicalities.

"Saturday night row," he remarked. "Do you often
have 'em?"

I shook my head. I wanted to hear what was going
on. I got up and walked towards the door.

"Take my advice and keep out of it," Geddes said,
quietly.

"Why?" I asked sharply. Geddes harassed me. I was
interested, excited and a little anxious. It seemed to me
that the sound of those voices was, in some way, im-
portant.

"Never know what you may be let in for in a house like
this," Geddes said, and his voice had an effect of being un-
naturally audible. Upstairs there was turmoil and in imagi-
nation I was straining to enter it. Geddes's calm enuncia-
tion was like a voice of disembodied warning urging me not
to enter the world.

Then came the thump of some heavy piece of furniture
on the floor above.

Geddes stood up. "Don't be an ass, Hornby," he said,
as I put my fingers on the door-handle.

I believe he went on urging me not to be an ass, but as
I opened the door a crash of broken glass or china drowned
his further remonstrance, and my consciousness of Geddes
fell into the background. The whole house was suddenly
vibrant with the shrill hysterical voice of Miss Whiting and
the persistent, monotonous shouting of my landlord.

"Be kvi-et, I say, you. Vill you be ker-vi-et, I say," he
repeated on an increasingly vindictive note of expostula-
tion.

As I mounted the stairs I trembled with apprehension
lest the rising anger of Pferdminger might culminate in

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 127

some physical outrage. He seemed to be reaching the limit
of his self-control. The high screaming of the woman was
less terrifying; it suggested the shriek of steam from a
safety-valve.

But Pferdminger had not the quality of a murderer as
I knew at once when he grasped at my intervention. He
had been standing at the threshold of Miss Whiting's open
door and heard me as I bounded up the short flight of stairs
to the landing.

"Ach ! you speak to her," he shouted, "she ees mad."

Miss Whiting was partly undressed and was still reck-
lessly discarding her most intimate garments as I reached
the door of her room. Something of her energy must have
been exhausted by then, and she was obviously striving to
keep the pressure of her fury at its highest point.

"Turn me out, would you?" she screamed. "Then you
can damned well turn me out stark naked, you . . ."

But I dare not report her speech. The epithet she found
for Pferdminger made me wince and she saw that I winced
and repeated her obscenity with greater distinctness and a
new touch of venom.

"Be kviet, I say," came the sound of Pferdminger's voice
from behind me.

"Yair!" was the derisive jeer of Miss Whiting as nearly
as I can render it ; and she made the sound disgusting even
without the emphasis of her gesture.

She held us intimidated and she knew it. Standing there
in her chemise and stockings, confessed as a relatively
fragile, weak creature, she dominated us by the recklessness
of her passion. She had cast off all the restraints of con-
ventional life, touched some absolute of self-expression that
was too strong for our divided minds. We were afraid of
her because we were afraid of ourselves and of the judg-
ment of society. She was, at that moment, a single and a
powerful personality. We had to fight ourselves before we
could fight her; and with the help of her allies she out-
numbered us.

And as if she, too, clearly understood her advantage, she

128 HOUSE-MATES

made a demonstration of her impugnity. She snatched a
small vase from the mantelpiece, held it poised for a mo-
ment, and then dashed it through the window.

The crash of breaking glass was followed almost at once
by the furious ringing of the front door bell, and a clamor-
ous knocking outside.

Little Pferdminger, utterly defeated, crept downstairs,
calling upon God.

"Police," remarked Miss Whiting in a perfectly level
voice. "That dirty little has gone to let 'em in."

"What are you going to do?" I asked. They were the
first words I had spoken. For me the tensity of the situa-
tion was instantly relaxed. I felt as if I had awakened
from some appalling nightmare. The thing I had mistaken
for a figure of horror and disgust had taken the form I
recognised as human. I was sorry for Miss Whiting. I
wanted to advise and protect her. I believed that now she
would be perfectly reasonable, tractable.

The heavy tramp of feet was coming upstairs and we
could hear the fretful plaint of Pferdminger's voice assert-
ing his respectability.

"Hadn't you better get something on ?" I said. I had not
for one instant forgotten my status in civilisation and I
judged her, too, to be within reach of my acceptable stand-
ards.

But during that interval of tremendous quiet she had
only been saving herself ; and it may be that having experi-
enced the exaltation of power, she desired to reach a still
higher climax, in which she might dominate a stronger
enemy. For even as I felt the touch of a rough grasp on
my arm and heard the familiar gruff, "Now then, what's
all this?" of the policeman's voice, Miss Whiting let her-
self go again with a horrible scream and made a wild sweep
of the ornaments that still remained on the mantelpiece.

I was beaten and knew it, but the two bluff men who
had come in from the street had an experience and an au-
thority that I lacked. They did not hesitate. They went
straight for her with an intensity that equalled her own.

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 129

But the threat of their rush into the room was too much
for me. I could not bear it. I shrank back on to the
landing. I heard her scream "Don't touch me!" and my
feeble hands went up to my ears.

And then, in the middle of it all, came a queer little inter-
lude that I cannot explain. I found myself confronted on
the landing by a young man in evening dress with an opera
hat cocked jauntily at the back of his head. I do not know
if he spoke to me ; and when I had dropped my hands he
had reached the door of Miss Whiting's room.

"Oh! Good Lord!" he ejaculated, and turned away and
ran downstairs and, I suppose, back into the street. I do
not know where he came from and I never saw him again.
At the moment I accepted him as the phenomenon of a
dream.

But his intrusion had snatched my attention from the
drama of the open rooms, and when I half-fearfully re-
turned to it, the scene was over. Miss Whiting's screaming
defiance had changed to a whimper, and I heard a gruff,
friendly voice saying: "For goodness' sake, put something
on, my girl, or you'll catch your death o' cold with that
broken winder."

I became aware of peace and at the same time of the
stirring life of the rest of the house. Up above a door
closed quietly as if some listener had crept back, reas-
sured.

I began slowly to descend the stairs. The two policemen
and Pferdminger passed me in the hall, and the policemen
touched their helmets to me. There was a brief confer-
ence in the passage. I inferred that Pferdminger was
generous.

Geddes had gone.

Presently two of the Germans came in together, rather
noisily. My door was open and they looked in as they
passed but they did not speak to me.

A few minutes later I heard the click of the latchkey
again, and this time, after a short hesitation, I went out
into the hall. I felt that I must talk to some one.

130 HOUSE-MATES

in

I found the man whom I had guessed to be an artist turn-
ing over the letters that had come by the last post. The
gas was still burning, a fact that marked some unusual hap-
pening in the house. The dark man looked at me as if he
understood at once that I wanted to speak to him.

"What's happened to Pf erdminger ?" he asked glancing
up at the flickering bat's-wing gas-jet. He had a low,
resonant voice that I found very pleasing.

"There's been no end of a shindy," I said, leaning against
the door-frame of my room. "The police have been in." I
tried to give my opening announcement a dramatic quality
that would interest him. I was afraid of losing his at-
tention.

My new friend whistled softly, a low, rich note that
matched the tone of his voice. "Fishing?" he asked briefly.

I understood his allusion. "Not exactly," I told him.
"She simply asked for it. She's been smashing up Pferd-
minger's property. Didn't you notice any glass on the
pavement ?"

He shook his head. "What began it?" he said.

"Care to come in for a minute or two?" I suggested,
and as he nodded we heard our landlord coming up from
the basement.

A strong sense of excitement was still intoxicating me,
and I welcomed Pferdminger almost eagerly. He and I
had just come through peril and defeat together, and I
felt a new sympathy for him.

"Come in and have a drink," I said.

For one moment Pferdminger's weak eyes had looked
past me, but when he realised that my attitude was en-
tirely sympathetic, the defect in his vision righted itself.

"She ees mad, that woman," he said, and then, "You haf
toldt Mr. Eel?"

I inferred "Hill." "No, not yet," I said, "I was go-
ing to."

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 131

Pferdminger shrugged himself comprehensively. "She
sink I die afraid of her," he remarked, "but eet ees not so.
I tell her she go. Eet ees a great mistake she come here
already."

"Tell us all about it," Hill put in, and we went into my
room. Pferdminger accepted whiskey with an air of cere-
monious apology, but Hill would not drink anything.

And then we had the whole story very dramatically told
but with little suggestions of the truth peeping out between
Pferdminger's inflated statement of his pure intentions. He
sat by the table with a great effect of enjoying my entertain-
ment. He reminded me of a nonconformist minister pay-
ing a formal "visit to a wealthy and important member of
his congregation. And he told us with considerable fluency
and much reaching out after idiom the full history of his
relations with Miss Whiting over a period of three months.

The greater part of his story was quite manifestly un-
true. His pretence of innocence concerning the nature of
Miss Whiting's profession convinced us no more than
his boast of bullying. He was undoubtedly getting an ex-
orbitant price for his rooms, and Hill and I inferred that
Miss Whiting had come to "73" as a refuge, from more
suspicious lodgings in which she had had difficulties. For, in
effect, one of Pferdminger's boasts was nearly true. His
house had been respectable, and, now, with the assurance
of my plate on the door, he had meant, if possible, to re-
gain his honourable name.

"I belief her when she pretend ze teeatre profession," he
repeated many times, and at each repetition gave himself
away by adding, "Vith two front floors not let at all how
does one do ozzerwise ?"

"Now," he concluded, "it is bad, eh? Ze police know —
Zey haf zeir eyes on me. And already tonight before zey
come, I haf said to zat damn woman 'I haf you no more.
You are too bad for me.' Andt you see, yourself, Mr.
Hornby, how she continue."

He drank whiskey with eclat, tiltimj it abruptly down
his throat as if afraid that it might touch his palate.

HOUSE-MATES

"To-morrow she go out wiz- her head in front," he an-
nounced, smacking his lips. "I put aside zree weeks of
rent zat she owe, and for ze window and ze ozzer sings, I
say nossing. But," he got to his feet, "we clear ze air of
her, eh?" And then he clicked his heels together, bowed
neatly to Hill and myself in turn, and made a very creditable
departure.

Poor little Pferdminger, he was not at all a bad little
man, but he was too greedy. It was his love of cash in
hand that got him into such serious trouble — that and his
cowardice.

IV

I did not want Hill to go and I began to talk in order
to keep him. I had touched, for the first time in my ex-
perience, the crude substance of life and all my thought
was still tingling with the excitement of that contact.

"She — this Whiting person, I mean — was rather mag-
nificent in a way," I said. "Pferdminger and I couldn't do
anything with her, you know."

"Swear much?" Hill asked.

"Oh! all the time," I said, "—badly, but it wasn't that."
I tried to realise the nature of the power she had exercised,
and failing, continued, "Of course, she threatened to un-
dress— at least, she was pretty nearly stark, and every min-
ute we expected the last rag to go. I don't know why that
should have frightened us, but it did. It did me, anyhow."

Hill's smile was, I thought, a little sardonic. "You
couldn't face the primitive," he suggested.

"No, I suppose not," I agreed. "She was most in-
fernally primitive — savage, even."

Hill did not respond. He was lying back in my best
armchair, apparently attentive, and yet unresponsive. His
dark eyes watched me continually, but I could not be sure

whether or not he was listening with any interest to what

I. , ° •/

said.

"Does all this bore you?" I said.

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 133

He shook his head but did not rouse himself. "What
about the girls upstairs?" he asked. "Were they there —
or Mrs. Hargreave?"

The mention of the "girls upstairs" confused me. I was
quite unprepared for it ; indeed, the one girl in whom, alone,
I was interested, had occupied such a remote, distinctive
place in my mind, that I had not once thought of her in
relation to the row on the first floor.

"Mrs. Hargreave?" I said, instinctively grasping at a
cover for my embarrassment. "Who's she?"

"Stoutish woman. Wears a fur coat," Hill explained.

"I know her by sight," I said.

"I wonder she didn't come down," Hill went on ; "if only
to defend Miss Whiting against the brutalities of you two
men."

"Woman's rights sort of thing?" I asked.

Hill smiled as if he were faintly amused at my ingenuous-
ness. "You don't know any of the people in the house?" he
remarked, and gave his sentence the tone of an assertion
that required endorsement.

"No — not yet," I admitted.

"What made you come here ?"

"Just accident."

"Any clients, yet?"

"One that I brought with me," I said.

Hill nodded and yawned. "I must go," he said. "I've
got a notice to write before I go to bed."

"Are you a dramatic critic?" I asked.

"Sometimes," he admitted carelessly.

I was at once thrilled and astonished. My picture of a
dramatic critic had been very different from this.

"But why to-night?" I asked. "To-morrow's Sunday."

"I'm never much good in the morning," he said. "And
I've got to get the stuff into the office by five o'clock to-
morrow. They make up the paper earlier on Sunday."

He yawned again and got up; but I could not let him
go before he had answered one more question.

"Who are the two girls upstairs?" I asked with an elab-

134 HOUSE-MATES

orate air of being very casually interested. "Isn't this rather
a doubtful house for them to be in?"

"They're trying to get on the stage," Hill replied. "They
were in "The Furnace," that spectacular affair at the
Symposium — only ran a week, you know. What's the mat-
ter with this house?"

"Well, all those German fellows ..." I began.

"Oh ! they can look after themselves all right," Hill said,
and I knew that he referred to the two girls. "Besides," he
added with hi.s rather grim smile, "they're on the top floor
next door to Mrs. Hargreave. She's a dragon."

"We shall be quite respectable again after the Whiting
has gone," I remarked by way of concluding the conversa-
tion.

"You think Pf erdy will turn her out ?" Hill said.

"Rather. Don't you?" I returned.

"Not if she can find the money to pay up," Hill said.

He nodded casually as he left the room.

I could not go to sleep after Hill had gone and as I paced
up and down my sitting-room, my emotions drew to a
climax. My impressions were extraordinarily vivid. I saw
pictures, all a little brighter and sharper than reality; pic-
tures that flashed up and gave me a sensation of enjoy-
ment, but had no kind of consequence or relation.

The person of Rose Whiting figured very prominently
in that panorama ; and I saw her both glorified and debased ;
alternately as a presentation of beauty and vice. The sight
of her nakedness that I had feared so much now came to
me robbed of conventional suggestions. I saw her mag-
nificent as a statue in alabaster. And then I would see
her face above, framed in darkness, a face wreathed in
symbols of terror and disgust, as if she fought weakly
against her own damnation.

I made no effort, at first, to resist the coming of those

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 135

visions and for a time I found a keen pleasure in the
magical brilliance of my effortless imaginings. But very soon
I began to experience a kind of surfeit, and my repugnance
grew until I felt an actual physical sickness, and my visions
took on that haunting quality which comes to one in fever.

I struggled then as if I were fighting for the control of my
reason. I was very much aware of my duality; and pres-
ently as I began more successfully to defend myself against
the invasion of the single image which had nearly obsessed
me, my visions took another shape.

I remembered the night of my father's death, and my
walk home with the little deformed doctor through the
moonlight ; and more particularly I recalled the clearness of
my recognition that there were two Wilfred Hornbys.

I wanted to pause and consider that curious phenomenon,
but I was incapable of deliberate, consequent reflection. A
new set of images had been evoked, and they carried me
down a long stream of impression which seemed to relate
all those moments of ecstasy that had come to me in such
queer forms. I experienced again the poised expectation
that I had known when I saw the glory of the purple
clematis, the cathedral of Medboro' half drowned in the
mists, or the silver and ebony relief of the bright dawn in the
Marylebone Road. And I tried desperately to remain
poised. It seemed to me that now, at last, I should be able
to peer over the edge of life and see once, clearly, the
beauty that lay beyond.

I sat down in my armchair and pressed my hands to my
eyes. I suppose I must have fallen asleep almost in-
stantly.

.

VI

The waking was a very dreary business. I was cold and
cramped; and when I tried to get to my feet I collapsed
into my chair again ; my right foot was a senseless, useless
lump of clay, and I had to endure the tantalising pain of
"pins and needles" before I could stand. The time was a

136 HOUSE-MATES

quarter to five, and my bedroom and my bed felt cold and
damp; but I was soon asleep again.

When I awoke for the second time, Pferdminger was in
my room. He often waited upon me, himself, a mark, I
believe, of his particular regard for the dignity I had con-
ferred upon his house.

"You sleep a long time zis morning," he remarked, as
he struggled with the Venetian blind.

"What time is it?" I asked. I had realised at once that
my landlord and I were on a new footing, but I felt self-
conscious and awkward. The incidents of the night before
seemed a trifle garish and unreal in the light of morning.

He told me that it was half-past nine, and added that
it was a fine day. He had brought me my hot water, and
now pottered uncertainly about the room as if he had still
some further service to offer.

I sat up in bed and tried to be decently friendly.

"How is Miss Whiting this morning?" I asked.

Pferdminger shook his head gravely. "Not veil at all,"
he said. "She was certainly mad last night. But zees morn-
ing eet ees all ozzervise. So! She have apologize and say
she pay everysing. Eet ees perhaps unfortunate for some
vays, but I cannot . . ." he could not find a word suf-
ficiently forcible to express the brutal ejection of Miss
Whiting, and had resource to a gesture which certainly sug-
gested that considerable force would be required. "No, I
cannot do so if she pay everysing," he concluded.

"You might give her notice," I put in.

"Oh! noteece! Vat is zat?" Pferdminger returned
warmly. "She snap her hands at my noteece. And eet ees
vinter already."

I guessed that his last remark referred less to the in-
humanity of turning Miss Whiting out into the imaginary
cold (it was a particularly bright clear morning at the end
of October) than to the difficulty of replacing her at that
time of year.

"Oh! well, as long as she behaves herself," I remarked
cheerfully.

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 137

"Oh ! she behave herself, now," Pferdminger replied with
intense conviction. "No fear, now, zat she behave not her-
self. She fear ze police. Zey noteece her always after
zis. She die afraid of zem, now."

I could see that he had supreme faith in that threat of
police interference so far as the future safety of his own
household goods was concerned.

"You're not afraid that the police will be down on you?"
I asked.

Pferdminger's left eye suddenly became lost in abstrac-
tion. "Zey know I have always the most respectable ten-
ants," he said. "For last night? Zat was unlucky. It hap-
pen so to any one. Eh?"

I wondered how Hill had known so well that our land-
lord would change his mind. On the previous night he
would, I am sure, gladly have seen Miss Whiting carried
out on a stretcher. . . .

Not until I had had breakfast did I become aware that
the events of the night had had some very strong effect
upon me.

My first impression was that the lightness of my mood
was due to the change of weather. It was one of those
still, clear October days that come in late autumn and charm
us with an enchanted parody of summer. The night frost
had cleansed and re- vivified the London air; and the thin,
sweet sunlight that played on the houses opposite seemed
to bring the sharp scent of the country into my sitting-room.
I could see the stubble fields still wet with frost, and hear
the gentle whisper of dead leaves that fell softly through
the crisp foliage of the glowing beech woods. I heard the
clamour of rooks and smelt the faint sharpness of the
pinched hedges. I saw the trail of "old men's beard," still
green in the shadows, and the brightness of the lingering
sloes and blackberries. And surely there would still be
a few late flies low over the river, and the swirl of a chub
feeding.

But when the keen suggestions of the country gave place
to my recognition of town surroundings, the sense of pleas-

138 HOUSE-MATES

ure and anticipation still remained with me. I remem-
bered my new freedom. I need not go to church, nor
endure the stuffy ceremony of dinner at Ken Lodge. I
should not be called upon to chafe through a long after-
noon with Gladys.

And still my feeling of lightness and vitality was not
accounted for, and I began to realise that a load of resent-
ment and oppression had been lifted from my mind. I no
longer nourished any animosity against the girl who had
snubbed me on the doorstep. I was sure, now, that she
would sooner or later forgive me for my stupidity.

I walked over to the window and looked out with a new
ease. I was not afraid any more of my house-mates. I
would have nodded gladly to the little white-haired Ger-
man in his frock-coat and bowler.

Last night the slow process of my development had been
wonderfully completed. I had come out of my shell. I
had suddenly realised that it is easier and far more in-
spiriting to love than to cherish a timid, shrinking animosity.

VII

Yet I do not wish to convey the impression that there
was anything miraculous in my apparent change of mind.
The longing for some spiritual enlargement had always
been with me, but all the forces of my training, all the
models of my life had withheld me from any expression.
I was, I still am, a plastic, adaptable creature, and I had
sedulously modelled and enthroned the one ideal that had
always been put before me. The profession of becoming
a gentleman had been the idol I was taught to worship,
and none had ever suggested to me that my idol lacked
comprehensiveness. Good form, the esteem of my contem-
poraries, a little fame and position, and the getting of as
much money as I could honestly acquire, these were the
sole objects of social life. Behind them lay the necessity
of insuring peace throughout eternity by the careful obser-

THE NIGHT OF THE ROW 139

vation of certain ritual formalities. No one had ever gone
deeper than that with me; no one had ever talked to me
of a beauty that was not stereotyped.

My sudden enlargement had been brought about by in-
tense nervous excitement and a new sight of life — life
unrestrained, passionate, elemental. I had been ready, and
the freedom of my loneliness had helped to release me.

But there was another factor which, however unrealised
that Sunday morning, was perhaps the most potent of all.

For the first time in my life I was beautifully, won-
derfully in love.

VII
MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE

I COULD not remain quietly in my rooms that morning.
The most reasonable alternative would have been to
take bus or train out into the country ; to enjoy in fact what
I had already tasted in imagination. But I was at the
mercy of my new craving for life. The thought of a lonely
day in the country was repugnant to me. I wanted to talk
to a friend, and my first idea was that I would go over to
West Kensington and see Geddes — I could tell him of
the strange adventure of the night and of the effect it had
had upon me. A little reflection, however, soon turned
me from that project. Geddes would not be interested;
he would cut short my narrative with his advice to have
nothing to do with the other people in the house; and
then complete his interrupted specification of that con-
founded fire-proof partition. No, I did not want Geddes's
companionship.

Nor did the contemplation of an afternoon with Horton-
Smith appeal to me just then. He and I knew as much
as we should ever know about each other. It was little
enough, but I could not conceive of any deeper intimacy
between us. If I told him of last night's adventure he
would ask me ribald questions about Rose Whiting, ques-
tions that would not touch even the surface of my inter-
est. He would understand me no better than my Cousin
Gladys would have done. Indeed, I could not understand
myself.

I felt a great impulse to talk to some one, but I could

140

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 141

not imagine a conversation that would satisfy me, nor, at
the moment, picture a possible companion. I was not at
all certain that my craving was not a symptom of mere
foolishness that ought to be drowned in work. Possibly
the fact that it was Sunday morning alone interfered with
me and the resolution to work. I had never, then, worked
on a Sunday; and I had a queer, superstitious qualm
about it, that even now I have not entirely conquered.

And when, at last, I boldly conceived the notion of
going upstairs to see Hill, I understood that while this was
by far the most attractive plan I had yet made, it still
lacked. the air of promising a perfect satisfaction. More-
over, I was horribly shy of intruding my company upon
him. If I had suffered some change of condition in the
past twelve hours, the embryo had emerged bearing the
authentic stamp of the old Wilfred Hornby. I had the
capacity for freer movement, but I was precisely the same
chicken that had lain cramped in its shell for twenty-
eight years.

Nevertheless, the desire to go up and see Hill increased
as I considered the possibility. I could not say why, but
the idea of going upstairs had the quality of an adven-
ture. The thought of it enticed me like some delicious
temptation, and when Pferdminger came to clear away
my breakfast, I asked him boldly as to the exact location
of Hill's room.

Pferdminger was evidently suspicious of my intention
and flew his unusual indication of nervousness. He could
never have become a successful criminal with that weak-
ness of the left eye ; it betrayed him on the slightest occa-
sion. He prevaricated, now, by pretending that Hill had
gone out

I contradicted that flatly. Opposition increased my long-
ing for Hill's company. But when I had bullied Pferd-
minger into giving me the required information, and was
actually standing outside Hill's door, I should certainly
have gone down again without knocking if he had not called
out from within the room.

142 HOUSE-MATES

"Hal-lo!" he said with a little drop in the second sylla-
ble. I thought his hail was touched with a note of ex-
asperation.

"Oh! hallo!" he repeated in another tone when I had
opened the door and showed myself. "It's you, is it? Come
in. I thought it was Lippmann — the stout chap, you know."

I mentally placed Lippmann as one of the three Germans
who turned eastwards every morning.

Hill's room was a litter of books. Most of them were
untidily stacked round the walls; but there must have
been nearly a hundred volumes, scattered about on the bed,
the table, the two cane chairs and the chest of drawers.

"I'm afraid I'm interrupting you," I said, "but I thought
— I wanted ..." I found that I had no sort of reason-
able excuse for coming.

"You're not," Hill said, looking at me with a rather
whimsical smile. "Come in. Have you seen Pferdminger
this morning?" He got up and offered me the wicker
armchair, and when I refused that, cleared one of the
cane-seated chairs for me by transferring a pile of books
to the already overweighted table.

"I've been sorting out a few books to sell," he explained.
"They accumulate at an unholy rate, and it's too much
bother to do 'em up."

"You certainly haven't much room for them here," I
said. In my innocence I believed that he was sacrificing
his treasures and attempting to conceal his poverty.

He apparently understood the intention of my polite
agreement.

"All review books — practically, you know," he said.
"Muck, for the most part, not worth keeping. I get the
bookseller to come up with a sack now and again."

I believe at the moment I was chiefly astounded by the
thought that he could have read and reviewed so many
works. The accumulation there in his room seemed to me
a life's undertaking.

I began to ask him ingenuous questions about this un-
known business of reviewing. I had had some vague,

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 143

incurious notion that critics or reviewers — I appreciated
no distinction between the two titles — were all literary men
of considerable attainment, men who made the welfare of
literature the chief concern of their lives. Hill exposed
the foolishness of that idea in a sentence.

"There are over three thousand books published every
year," he said, "and not a dozen of them worth serious
attention ; but most of 'em are reviewed."

"Why?" I asked.

"To keep the publishers' advertisements," Hill told me,
but he had to enter into a fuller account of the commercial
aspects of journalism before I could appreciate that simple
explanation.

"It makes one see literature in rather a bad light," was
my final comment. His statement depressed me. I had
always thought it rather a wonderful thing to write a
book.

"It's a trade," Hill said ; "and it employs a lot of people."

"Reviewers?" I put in.

Hill smiled. "And the staff of about eighty publishers,
and the printers and binders, and the circulating libraries,
to say nothing of the paper-makers and so on," he re-
minded me.

"But who reads them all?" I asked.

"God knows," Hill said.

We were still on the subject of making books when some
one tapped lightly at the door.

"Come in, Helen," Hill called out, and then, as the door
opened, he got up and said : "I've elected a new member of
the Sunday morning club— our prize lodger."

"Oh !" replied "Helen" on a note of apprehension.

She stood immediately inside the door and looked at me
with frowning disapproval, her head ducked a little for-
ward, and with something in her pose that suggested an
angry hen. She was, indeed, blocking the entrance, and
I knew perfectly well that "the other one" was just out-
side. I had hardly realised until that moment how com-

144 HOUSE-MATES

pletely I had come to regard her as being "the other
one," in a class apart from all the rest of mankind.

"Look here, I'll go now," I said to Hill.

It may sound absurd, but I was actually trembling with
fear. I felt that I simply could not dare to meet that
other one.

"Nonsense!" Hill returned, and then he turned to the
girl by the door and said : "Come in, Helen. Isn't Judith
there? I'll tell you all about that rotten play I did last
night."

Helen came a little further into the room, still brooding.
"I don't suppose, Mr. Hornby," she began, and she no doubt
finished her sentence, but I did not hear the rest of it, for
Judith had followed her friend and had looked at me
with, I thought, the faintest suggestion of a smile.

I remembered then with a flush of horrible abasement
all my sulky projects for recrimination. The opportunity
had come, now. I could throw up my head and return the
snub she had given me a week ago. But never did any
man feel more abject than I felt at that moment.

I dropped my eyes like a shy school-girl. All my being
seemed to have suddenly run into a mould of the weakest
humility.

ii

Hill was laughing, not at me but at the mouse-coloured
young woman he addressed as Helen; and my embarrass-
ment was by no means relieved when I discovered that he
knew the whole story of my attempt to accost the two girls
on the doorstep.

"Don't harbour resentment, Helen," he was saying. "Mr.
Hornby was only wanting to be elected a member of our
club."

Helen had sat down on the foot of the bed. Her head
still drooped, sulkily, and she did not answer at once. Then
she glanced quickly at me with a look of sullen dislike.

"There are different ways of doing things," she mut-
tered.

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 145

"Tell 'em your intentions were quite innocent, Hornby,"
Hill said, turning to me.

But I did not wish to make my excuses on those grounds.
I should have liked to tell them the whole story of that
Sunday morning. I held the mistaken conviction that if
I could but explain myself fully and truthfully, every one —
even the moody Helen — would sympathise with me. No
doubt your average criminal labours under the same
delusion.

"Frightfully sorry," I mumbled. "Rotten mistake of
mine, that was all." I dared not look at Judith, who was
now sitting by her friend on the bed.

"You don't mean to pretend you thought you knew us,"
Helen snapped.

"It wasn't that ..." I began, as if I were going to ex-
plain exactly what it was.

"Well, then ... ?" Helen prompted me remorselessly.

"Better make a clean breast of it and get it over," Hill
added, smiling encouragement. "The way I had the story,
you seem to have broken the table of the commandments
on the front steps. Miss Whiting's little affair last night
was a trifle in comparison."

And then, as so often happens, the whole drift of our
conversation was instantly directed into another channel.

"Oh! Mr. Hill, what did happen last night?" Judith asked
eagerly. "We do so want to know. We came out on to
the landing, but Mrs. Hargreave wouldn't let us come
down."

"Better ask Hornby," Hill said. "He was there. It was
all over when I came in."

"I thought I heard your voice," Helen put in with an
accusing look at me, and I realised that I was, now, under
suspicion of another offence not less heinous than the
first. I felt that this time I must be very convincing.

"I didn't hear the beginning of it," I said. "I had a friend
with me downstairs."

It was not a fortunate opening. I saw a clear indica-
tion of this woman Helen's suspicion of me when I men-

146 HOUSE-MATES

tioned the word friend. She had made up her mind that
I was a professional philogynist, and she was as deter-
mined as a savage hen, fully prepared to defend the pre-
cious chicken she had adopted.

"I — I wanted him to come up, too," I went on, address-
ing Hill, "but he's one of those fellows who is frightened
to death of a row. He's always afraid he'll get implicated
in some way."

The sound of my own voice gave me confidence, and I
was glad to be able to talk directly to Hill. I wanted
some such opportunity as this to give me a chance to —
there is no other phrase that gives quite the same effect —
to "show off." All male animals do it. Small boys of
seven will become boisterous and foolish when a little girl
comes into their game.

"Architect, too?" Hill asked with a friendly wish to
help my explanation.

I nodded. "We were in the same office together in Lin-
coln's Inn," I said. "Well, we heard some kind of row
going on and I went up to see if — if I could help. Pferd-
minger sounded absolutely murderous."

I glanced at Helen, and saw the signal of her incredulity
in the lift of her thick eyebrows — she had queer eyebrows,
with strong, untidy brown hairs that grew irregularly. It
was a surprise to see her dull, mouse-coloured eyes peering
out from under that thatch.

Her obstinate suspicions confused me. I found it very
difficult to be convincing while every word I said was
weighed with such a jealous distrust.

"His property was getting smashed, you see," I said,
staring my defiance at her.

"Well, what happened ?" she asked, and her friend helped
me by adding:

"We heard the smashing going on."

"The whole street heard it," I said. "That was what
fetched the police in. She chucked a vase through the
window."

"Why didn't Mr. Pferdminger stop her?" asked Helen,

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 147

pronouncing our landlord's name in the English way with
a thick "er" sound and a soft "g."

"Pferdminger," I repeated, correcting the pronunciation.
"Oh! he was afraid of her."

"Were you afraid, too?" she retorted.

Her remark suggested a change of attitude, but her new
attack was more difficult to repulse. I had already told
Hill that I had been afraid, and I had a foolish disinclina-
tion, now, to repeat the chief reason of Rose Whiting's
power to intimidate us.

"She was so — so primitive," I tried, snatching at the word
I had used the night before.

"She swore dreadfully, didn't she?" Judith put in.

I dared to glance at her and saw that she was leaning
forward, listening with a simple ardour to my halting,
undramatic account of the highly dramatic incident.

"I'm telling it very badly," I apologised.

Hill came to my rescue. "It seems that Miss Whiting
had come down to a single garment," he explained; "and
she was threatening them to drop that any moment. And,
you see, they were a trifle too civilised to risk it."

I believe I was the only one of the four who felt really
uncomfortable, although Helen's air of indifference was
rather too deliberate. She pursed her lips with an expres-
sion of contempt and murmured something that might have
been "poor thing," or possibly "poor things."

"It was jolly awkward, anyway/' I mumbled, and I have
been told since by one of the other listeners that I looked
like "a rather nice old maid at a musical comedy." I can
quite believe it. I knew that there was no reason for
my embarrassment, but I could not appear at ease. Ken
Lodge would have been outraged; Horton-Smith and his
kind would have made some lewd joke ; and these differing
expressions of the same attitude were all the examples I
was familiar with.

Hill evidently found my prudishness amusing.

"Our new friend Hornby is a model of respectability,"

148 HOUSE-MATES

he said ; "and our ambitious landlord looks to him to bring
salvation to 73 Keppel Street."

I was glad that the conversation should take that turn;
also, I was flattered by the kindly tone of Hill's chaff.

"The trouble is," I said, "that Pferdminger doesn't back
me up."

The interrogative of Hill's eyebrows encouraged me to
explain my remark. He was, undoubtedly, doing his best
to help me. But before I could announce my little piece
of news as to Miss Whiting's reinstatement, the door opened
and the woman Hill had indicated as Mrs. Hargreave
came in.

"I heard you all talking, so I didn't knock," she said,
looking at me; and then went on: "You are Mr. Hornby,
aren't you? I've seen you working at your window."

I bowed.

"There's still one chair left," Hill suggested. "Hornby
has been telling us about the row last night."

Mrs. Hargreave sat down and leaned her elbows on the
table. She was a handsome woman, but even on that first
morning I was puzzled by something that blurred the intel-
ligence of her face — I do not know whether it was that her
eyes stared too fanatically, or if it were that her manner
and general expression hinted at too great a worship of
the autocratic ideal. She was wearing the familiar fur coat
as a dressing gown; and that, also, helped to produce the
effect of a boasting idiosyncrasy.

"I've been talking to the unlucky girl this morning," she
said, taking up Hill's last remark. "I heard how she was
badgered and bullied first by Pferdminger and Mr. Hornby,
and then by the police; and I've advised her to resist any
attempt at ejection."

I was too staggered by this version of the affair to do
more "than stare my amazement, but Hill chuckled as if
he were quite prepared for new aspects from Mrs.
Hargreave.

"I heard that Miss Whiting did all the bullying in the
first instance," he said.

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 149

"How else could she protect herself?" Mrs. Hargreave
returned.

"Against Pferdminger's modest request for rent?"

"Against his criminally extortionate charges," Mrs. Har-
greave corrected him. "It's simply blackmail," she went
on ; "he squeezes her for every penny he can. . . ."

She was fairly under way, sitting very upright, and
her hard blue eyes stared defiance of an imaginary audience
far larger than the small group of people collected in that
little room. But Hill would not permit the argument to
become a lecture.

"Oh ! look at it another way," he put in quickly. "Pf erdy
has to take risks on the Whiting, and her extra rent is
the premium she has to pay. When he gets a respectable
lodger like Hornby, he can afford to let him have the rooms
cheap."

"But he wants her to go," I said.

"Not he," snapped Mrs. Hargreave. "When I offered
to pay him this morning, he simply grovelled."

"Are you really going to pay for her?" Helen asked with
great intensity.

"As a protest against persecution," Mrs. Hargreave said.

At the moment I did not believe her. Her circumstances,
no less than the peculiarity of her present attire, suggested
that, whatever her position had once been, she was not
now in a position to pay the £20 which I had mentally fig-
ured as the probable amount of Miss Whiting's debt to
Pferdminger by his calculation; he would certainly not
underestimate the value of the cheap German porcelain she
had smashed. Moreover, I had been distinctly offended by
Mrs. Hargreave's first remarks.

"I should have thought it would be better to let her go,"
I said.

"Why?" Mrs. Hargreave asked threateningly.

"Oh! well," I said and shrugged my shoulders. I felt
that my reasons could not be discussed in that company.

"Oh! well," Mrs. Hargreave repeated with a smile and,
as I thought, a surprising change of manner. Her imita-

150 HOUSE-MATES

tion of me was, I must admit, quite reasonably successful.
"It's always oh! well, isn't it?" she continued. "That is
the comfortable English attitude to all these things; the
old maid's attitude to everything that she knows nothing
about, and is afraid to enquire into. There are so many
old-maidish men of your type, Mr. Hornby. I wonder
whether you are only ignorant or really pig-headed."

I was on the verge of losing my temper when I .suddenly
became aware that "Judith" was looking at me with some-
thing very like pity in her face. And then I realised that
I was behaving like a fool; that in many ways I had al-
ways behaved like a fool, wilfully shutting my eyes to
one side of life and congratulating myself on my blindness.
The realisation came to me almost as my visions had come ;
as a piece of strange esoteric knowledge bewilderingly true
and real ; or as if for one tiny instant something had opened
and I had seen through.

in

"Only ignorant," I said on the impulse of the moment.
"At least, I hope so."

Mrs. Hargreave looked at me with a hint of approval.
"You seem to have a capacity for looking about you, at
any rate," she said, and went on: "So you deny that you
bullied Rose Whiting last night?"

"She bullied us," I returned.

"But you meant to bully her when you went upstairs,"
she insisted.

I looked back at my emotions of the night before and
found no trace of any impulse to domineer.

"No," I said, and as I spoke it came to me that in my
experience the bullies had all been women. Gladys had
nagged me; my aunt had kept Uncle David in subjection
by the constant threat of her ill-health; Miss Whiting had
delighted in her power to intimidate Pferdminger and my-
self ; and this woman now cross-examining me was the very
type of an autocrat.

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 151

"No," I repeated quickly, eager to hold the conversa-
tion, "I don't think I've got it in me even to want to bully
a woman. I told you that I thought Pferdminger's voice
sounded murderous. I was a fool, no doubt, but I went
to Miss Whiting's rescue."

Mrs. Hargreave emitted a little hoot of impatience, but
I would not give way to her. "It's the women who bully,"
I said in the warmth of my new conviction, and I heard
Hill give a grunt of approval. "Why, you've been trying
to bully me ever since you came into the room."

She ought to have been flabbergasted, but the fault I had
accused in her was one that she could never admit.

"Oh! that goes so beautifully with your 'Oh! well/ Mr.
Hornby," she said. "That's always the ingenuous mascu-
line way. You're all so gentle and kind as long as you
can do just what you like; but directly a woman objects
to being treated like a slave you open your eyes in aston-
ishment and say that she's bullying you."

"What about the case in point?" Hill began, but he was
unable to stop the flood I had released. Mrs. Hargreave
flowed over him with a furious stream of words. She was
fluent with all those earlier arguments for femininism that
were just becoming vocal at that time, all the foolish, clog-
ging stuff that hindered the free expansion of the movement,
and remained in many narrow, bigoted minds to the ex-
clusion of much that was more rationally to follow.

The effect of that morning's lecture upon me was unfor-
tunate, inasmuch as it prejudiced me for many years against
the whole cause of femininism. I had a little sealed com-
partment in my mind, enclosing that first instinctive reac-
tion against what was once freely discussed as the "sex-
war." And the facts I learnt later about Mrs. Hargreave's
personal history only served to confirm my unhappy preju-
dice against the biased views she so volubly and so un-
convincingly — as far as I was concerned — expressed on the
occasion of our first meeting.

But it may be that 1 am only seeking excuses for my-
self; that I am still struggling with the impossible task

152 HOUSE-MATES

of explanation in the hope of anticipating criticism. For
what presently followed does, I admit, seem to indicate
that I was still fast within that old shell of mine.

Mrs. Hargreave, with a histrionic sense for effect, fin-
ished on a high note, looked round her audience with
slightly dilated eyes, and vacated the platform before the
first threat of anti-climax was remotely possible. Her
doctrine was too absolute to admit discussion. She could
affirm brilliantly, but she could not contain her impatience
to argue about this one, fixed, sacred dogma of hers.

Hill drew a long breath of relief as she went out, and
when the door had closed behind her he said: "She's a
clever woman, Hornby, but she's got an obsession. I'll tell
you about it some time. We try to keep her off it, if we
can, but there are occasions . . . well, she was just primed
for it this morning by the Whiting episode."

I was glad that he should bother to explain to me, and
I should certainly have taken much less notice of Mrs.
Hargreave's outburst if Helen had not found it necessary
to take up the cudgels on her behalf.

"Oh ! well, Mr. Hill, I'm not sure . . ." she began in her
hesitating, muffled way; "I do agree with her, really, you
know. It's so true that women have been kept down and —
and sat upon — absolutely true." And then, feeling that her
own inarticulate rendering of Mrs. Hargreave was a very
inefficient expression of all that she wanted to say, she
concluded: "I agree with her — absolutely." Her drab eyes
were glowering a timid defiance at me.

I had endured Mrs. Hargreave, but I was roused to des-
peration by the pin-pricks of this mouse-coloured, elderly
young woman.

"Well, I think it's the most frightful rot," I said. I knew
in some way that these two women were standing between
me and that other quiet girl sitting on the bed.

"Of course," sneered Helen, "naturally you would."

"Why 'naturally'?" I said rudely.

"Well, we know that you don't like to see women stand-

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 153

ing up for themselves," she returned, still with that same
air of furtive boldness.

"I haven't the least idea what you mean," I said. I
was quite as petulant as she was, and as inarticulate.

Then she played a card which she must have known in-
stinctively would finally defeat me. She turned to Judith
and put her arms round her shoulders. "Aren't you com-
ing out this morning, darling?" she asked. "It's perfectly
lovely out, and I don't think we shall gain much by staying,
now Mrs. Hargreave has gone."

Judith nodded affectionately and got up at once. She
smiled at Hill as they went out, but she did not look at me.

IV

"I'm interrupting you," I said to Hill.

My speech sounded polite and was accepted as a con-
ventional insincerity; but I honestly wanted to get away.
I think my intention was to go downstairs and commit
suicide.

"You're not," Hill said. "I sha'n't work this morning —
nor this afternoon either for that matter."

"Did you finish your notice of the play last night?"
I asked. One side of my mind was attending automatically
to my companion, the remainder boiled with criticism of
myself.

"Yes, oh! yes," Hill was saying; "and I never told the
girls about it after all. You and Mrs. H. were so en-
thralling. We clean forgot it."

"Do they always come to see you on Sunday morning?"
I said. The two sides of my mind had come together again
in response to his last remark. I was pricked with sus-
picion at his casual mention of "the girls."

"It's a general reception," Hill said. "Usually Lippmann
and Herz come, too."

I hated the thought that those two Germans had full
liberty to stare, and bow, and smirk there every Sunday

154 HOUSE-MATES

morning; and I answered with a little gust of impatience.
"Oh! well," I said, "I think I'd better be going now."

"Just as you like," Hill returned; and then I wanted
to stay. His room seemed rich with possibilities. "They"
might look in again on their way out. Or failing that,
Hill might be induced to talk about them. Downstairs was
an arid desert. Nothing interesting could ever happen in
that confounded prison I had so idiotically fortified by my
little pretensions of dignity.

I was standing up in front of the fireplace, and I
remained there by sheer inertia.

"Queer woman, that Mrs. Hargreave," I said. I was
not particularly interested in her, but I wanted to talk
about one of the three women who had just gone, and
instinctively I chose the one who was most remote from
my thoughts.

"Shove a bit of coal on, there's a good chap," Hill said,
and then began to talk about Mrs. Hargreave.

I listened with the idea of diverting the conversation
to the vital topic as soon as I found an opportunity.

"She's interesting," Hill said, and I mumbled some en-
couragement while I dug into the coal-scuttle with the in-
efficient scoop.

"You'll find your fingers quicker," Hill interpolated.
"She's been married for twenty years, and now she has
chucked everything — position, children, husband, everything
one usually postulates as making up a woman's life — in
order to go on the stage."

"The stage!" I ejaculated scornfully, wiping my fingers
on the hearth-rug. "Why, she must be forty !"

"Thirty-nine," Hill said, "and her eldest daughter is
eighteen."

"But surely she has no earthly," I remonstrated.

"Not much, I'm afraid," Hill said. "But she's got tre-
mendous perseverance ; what the journalists call an indom-
itable spirit, you know."

"Has she got any money ?" I asked.

"Some apparently," Hill said. "A lump sum, I fancy, and

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 155

she's living on the capital. I'm not sure. She'll talk all
night about her revolt from family life, but she doesn't
offer confidences about her financial position."

I was interested now. "But I don't understand why she
chucked everything," I said. "Is she stage-struck or a bit
off her head?"

"She makes out a fairly good case for herself," Hill
said. "Her point is that she wants independence. Lots
of girls are saying the same thing just now — our little
friend, Judith, for instance — but Mrs. Hargreave's case
is different, because she's really sacrificing something — a
good deal, in fact, as one generally counts things. There
isn't any adventure, of the usual kind, for her; it seems to
be largely a matter of principle when you hear her talk.
She's certainly gone the whole hog. You can't help admir-
ing that, anyway."

"No! I suppose not," I put in mechanically. I was try-
ing desperately to phrase a comment that would bring him
back to that parenthesis about "our little friend." "But
these other girls you talk about ..." I began.

"That's so much more comprehensible," Hill said.
"They're out for all sorts of adventure, but the Hargreave
revolt can't bring anything but a kind of intellectual sat-
isfaction, the way I see it."

"I don't understand," I began again, meaning to open
out another channel, but Hill did not wait to hear what I
was going to say.

"I'll admit it's difficult," he went on ; "but it's worth puz-
zling over. I know another case a little like it — a woman
over fifty, but she was a widow which made some differ-
ence. The impulse seems to be the longing for individual
expression."

"Couldn't she have found that at home?" I suggested.
"With children and all?"

"But she really believes she can act, you know," Hill
returned.

"Pretty piffling thing to do, anyway," I said. I had very

156 HOUSE-MATES

recently decided that the stage was a rotten vocation for
women.

"It is an Art, of a kind, all the same," Hill affirmed.
"There really is a technique of acting." He paused and
looked up at me — I was still standing in front of the
mantelpiece — as if he were afraid that he might be divert-
ing our talk to a boring subject.

"I don't know much about it," I said. "I'm only the
ordinary amateur play-goer; the 'know-what-I-like' sort
of ass." I hesitated for a moment and then, as Hill did
not reply, I went on: "But I've got a sort of prejudice
against the stage as a profession for — for women. There's
a kind of suggestion in calling a woman an actress that
somehow doesn't fit with my idea of ..." I found that
I could not complete the sentence I had intended.

"Of Mrs. Hargreaye?" Hill supplied innocently.

I had been so near my object that this threat of still
another digression irritated me. "Oh ! a woman who would
go off and leave her children like that would do anything,"
I said.

"She tried to take them with her," Hill put in.

"And they had the good sense to refuse?"

"Well, the eldest girl seems to have been bitten with her
mother's idea. She comes here sometimes. She wants to
go on the stage, too, I believe."

I sighed impatiently. "What's the husband like ?" I asked.

"Well-meaning sort of chap, I imagine," Hill said. "Bit
on the pious side, and he's got on her nerves evidently."
He paused thoughtfully for a few seconds before he con-
tinued : "You can say what you like, Hornby ; it is a prob-
lem. A woman like Mrs. Hargreave wants an outlet, and
it's very difficult to see how she could have found it at
home. This feminist movement isn't going to stop where
it is. There's real force and reason behind it."

But I could not follow him, then. I had a sense of some
stubborn, tiresome impediment that came between me and
my ideal of womanhood; and while I felt that the oppo-
sition was foolish and untrue, I had not the patience to

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 157

meet it fairly. It seemed to me too silly to need serious
attention. I knew it was wrong and I wanted to push it
away with one careless effort. I was like a man trying to
think a pig out of his cabbages, and when I took up a stone
to throw, I threw it passionately and altogether wide of
the mark.

"Seems to me like damned selfishness," I said. "What
about the unfortunate husband, anyway? Hasn't he got
any sort of claim to consideration?"

"That's only a particular case, you know," Hill said;
"but even so, there's a good deal to be said for her. I
gather that Hargreave was a sensualist. . . ."

"Do you mean that he was unfaithful to her?" I in-
terrupted.

"No, I don't," Hill said. "I believe she'd have excused
that."

"I don't like her," I said, with an air of having deliv-
ered an inalterable opinion.

Hill was smiling. "Perhaps not," he returned, "but it's
no use sticking at that like a jibbing mule. You won't stop
her by merely saying, 'Don't be silly.' She has got an argu-
ment. The movement has got an argument, and if they
overstate it, it's only for the sake of emphasis."

I mentally consigned the movement and Mrs. Hargreave
to perdition ; and then, at last, dared what I had been long-
ing to say for half an hour.

"But these two girls," I began resolutely. "I don't know
their names . . . ?"

"Helen and Judith," Hill suggested.

"Haven't they got surnames?" I asked.

"Oh ! Helen Binstead and Judith Carrington — at least,
'Carrington' is her stage name. Her real name is Lillie,
but she had to suppress that."

"Why?"

"Ran away from her guardian aunts. They still don't
know where she is. You were going to say?"

"Oh ! nothing particular. Are they looking for her ?"

"The aunts ? Yes, rather."

158 HOUSE-MATES

"But why did she run away ?"

Hill was watching me with that bantering smile of his.
"She had a pretty bad time with them," he said. 'They
were early- Victorian and pious, tremendously didactic, I
take it. They were so almighty sure, you know, that their
manners and methods were the only possible ones for all
eternity. And Judith didn't go to them until she was fif-
teen, when her mother died; her father had been dead a
long time. So, all the restraints of Victorianism came a
bit hard on her. However, she endured them for five
years."

"What made her run away in the end ?" I asked, and tried
to disguise as well as I could the craving of my interest.

"Helen, chiefly," Hill said. "Judith met her at the sea-
side, and they fell in love with one another in the way
girls do sometimes. They arranged the scheme between
them."

"How long ago was that?"

"Only last August," Hill replied.

"Do you think the aunts are likely to find her?" I asked
carelessly.

"Doesn't really make much difference if they do," Hill
said. "They can't compel her to go back. It's very hard
on them, of course."

"Hard on them?" I ejaculated. "You surely don't think
a girl like — like Miss Carrington — ought to be shut up
in that awful old-maidish atmosphere. You don't know
what it's like, my dear chap. I've suffered from it all my
life, and I've only just begun to realise it."

"Then you don't think it merely looks like 'damned self-
ishness' in Judith's case?" Hill put in slyly.

"Oh! surely, this is absolutely different from the Har-
greave case," I expostulated.

"Possibly. In some ways," Hill said. "But if there's
something to be said for Hargreave, there are points for
the aunts, too."

I was sure he was wrong, but my argument was not a

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 159

very sound one. "You're too good for me at dialectic,"
I said at last.

"You've got no case," Hill replied. "I don't want to con-
found you, you know. I want to convince you."

I frowned over that for a few seconds before I said:
"That woman annoys me. She seems to have been so
unforgiveably selfish."

"But the same thing applies to Judith," Hill submitted.

"I haven't heard her case, yet — not properly," I said.
"She may have had all sorts of reasons. . . ."

"So may Mrs. Hargreave. . . ."

"She looks an egotist," I retorted crossly. "And a
fanatic."

"Sheer prejudice," Hill returned. "Also, I find virtues
in her fanaticism."

I was annoyed, but not with Hill. There was a sin-
cerity about him that appealed to me. Moreover, I admired
him aesthetically. His poise was right, in some natural,
graceful way — even the slight stoop of his head fell into
the composition and gratified my sense of appropriateness.
And yet the composure of his attitude expressed potential-
ity rather than inertia. He was alive. I could picture him
moved by a tremendous enthusiasm. His dark eyes glowed
with an earnestness very different from the thin, cool flame
of Mrs. Hargreave's fanaticism.

I drew him when I went back to my own room. I am better
at caricature than portraits, but that effort was a success.
I did it in soft pencil on "hot-pressed" paper, and, as hap-
pens sometimes, the thing just came of itself. I could see
every pencil mark on the paper before I put it in.

Afterwards I tried another portrait, a lamentable fail-
ure that made me furious with myself for the criminality
of the libel. Nothing was right except the delicious curve
of the hair over the left ear. And when I had burnt the
abomination with a sort of desperate spite, as if I were

160 HOUSE-MATES

trying to inflict a really effective punishment on myself, I
found that my memory was as faulty as my draughtsman-
ship. The beautiful line of that one ripple of hair was
all that I could visualise. I could remember a host of indi-
vidual details — and particularly a look of half-timid eager-
ness as if she shrank a little from pushing her enquiry too
far — but the details would not blend into a single picture.

I tried again after lunch and then went out for a walk
down Oxford Street and across the Park into Kensington
Gardens. The afternoon was as clear and crisp as the
morning had been — my father used to call that spell of fine
weather we so often get in October, "St. Luke's summer" —
but the gardens did not fulfil my morning's anticipations
of the country. There was a worn and jaded air even
in the less frequented depths between the Round Pond
and the Serpentine (near the place where Watts's "Physical
Energy" now makes one quite sure that Art should never
be didactic) ; a feeling of dust and smoke and tired human-
ity. Indeed, the last was very much in evidence; and the
women especially seemed to me clumsy and tawdry; they
were none of them right, and I had a personal grudge
against them all for their lamentable failure to conform
to my ideal of what they ought to have been — an ideal
that I could not formulate in words any better than I could
draw it on paper.

I was restless and unsatisfied; and quite unable, still, to
picture any single thing that would satisfy me. I went
back to my lodging after tea. I hated the thought of sit-
ting alone there, with nothing to do, but I could not stay
away. Keppel Street had an irresistible attraction for me.
I felt that every minute I stayed away from it I might be
losing some opportunity — for what I had no idea.

I had not been in more than ten minutes when I heard
two people coming downstairs. I knew instantly that they
were Miss Binstead and the girl she had persuaded to
join her in that doubtful place. And when they paused
at the foot of the stairs I suffered an agony of nervousness,
fearing that they might knock at my door. My revulsion of

MY INTRODUCTION TO THE HOUSE 161

feeling when I heard them go out gave me courage to go
over to the window, and I saw them go by in the dusk; a
little hurriedly, I thought, as if they were conscious that
they might be watched.

I was very sure of one thing that evening, namely, that
I hated Miss Helen Binstead. I knew that she was my
enemy, and I loathed the thought that she would be continu-
ally construing every action and word of mine to my dis-
advantage. If I showed my face at the window, she would
report that I leered.

VIII
PROGRESS

A BSORPTION by a single subject is bad for the mind.
<£*• I do not know if other people's experience is the same
as mine in this particular, but I have found that, if I study
a problem too earnestly, the problem presently takes the
upper hand. It begins as a detached thing that I can
regard from the outside, and ends by enveloping me. For-
tunately I always retain the ability to escape; the small
unanalysable capacity that separates the sane from the
obsessed.

The trouble that began to dominate me during the fort-
night that followed my Sunday morning in Hill's room
was my suspicion of Miss Binstead. I was right about
her up to a point, but I allowed my suspicion to grow be-
yond all reasonable bounds. I started, sanely enough,
by believing that she disliked me and that she meant, if pos-
sible, to prevent any intimacy between me and the girl whom
she had, in a sense, adopted. But I soon reached the absurd
position of regarding her as a kind of female devil, the
incarnation of malignancy.

I admit that my mental processes were all a trifle ab-
normal about that time. For one thing, I could not work,
and that irritated me. Until then I had always been able
to find relief in occupation. When I was most depressed
at the prospect of married life with my cousin, my work
had afforded me an outlet at the moment, and in my
thoughts>it had seemed to be the one thing to which I could
still look forward in the future I so gloomily pictured.

162

PROGRESS 163

Now, my capacity for concentration had apparently de-
serted me. The task of finishing the drawings I was mak-
ing to illustrate the article on "The £1,000 House" I was
submitting to The Studio had lost all interest for me. I
could not lose myself in the detail of design. It was as
if some other thought continually besieged me, seeking an
entrance into my consciousness ; some thought that I could
not define.

For while I knew, and admitted to myself, that the per-
sonality of Judith Carrington had some peculiar and un-
precedented attraction for me, I had not reached the stage
of understanding that I was finally and irretrievably in love
with her. That supposition had an air of being somewhat
ridiculous in the circumstances. If I had been consciously
prepared to worship some woman, had deliberately sought
to involve myself in some romantic entanglement, I should
have nursed those first symptoms of mine, and should soon
have persuaded myself that I was the victim of a grand,
and probably hopeless, passion.

But, so far from having sought love, I had first seen
Judith when I was chafing at the bonds of my engagement
to Gladys, when the thought uppermost in my mind had
been the thought of cutting myself free from feminine con-
trol. During all that time the word "release" had seemed
the most blessed ^n the English language. And, no doubt,
something of that attitude still persisted. I should cer-
tainly have been alarmed at the thought of pledging my
freedom to any woman just then.

The explanation of my uneasiness that I took out and
exhibited to myself with a certain plausibility was the neces-
sity for vindicating my character. I had been accused by
Miss Binstead of being a woman-hunter. Neither Mrs.
Hargreave — who had called me an old maid — nor Hill was
the least influenced by that story of my attempt to accost
the two women on the doorstep. I was fairly sure that
Miss Binstead, herself, attached little importance to it. But
I believed that she was maintaining the fiction of my loose
life for her own purposes, and although only one person

164 HOUSE-MATES

was likely to remain under any misconception by reason
of that slander, I told myself that I detested the thought
that any woman should have such a false opinion of me.
If the thing had stopped at the initial charge, I argued,
there would have been no reason for my disturbance of
mind — I could have lived it down. But — and it was here
that I was most convincing — the horrid suspicion of me
was being added to, day by day. Whatever I did, could be
used as evidence against me. If I took no more notice
of Miss Binstead and her friend, it was proof that I was
ashamed of myself; if I attempted to explain myself, I
should be persisting — according to that confounded woman
— in my original beastliness.

All this may sound very foolish, but it was uncommonly
real to me at the time. The problem of outwitting Miss
Binstead began to envelope me. And, as I have said, it
interfered with my work.

II

During the first week of this growing obsession I looked
forward to the next Sunday morning and the rendezvous
in Hill's room. I hoped that I might at least have an
opportunity, then, to exhibit myself in my natural char-
acter. I pictured myself as being very earnest about my
profession; making a little dissertation on the future of
town-architecture, perhaps; and particularly as being ex-
tremely interesting and at the same time almost ostenta-
tiously free from any desire that did not tend towards
the benefit of humanity. I worked up a few figures about
slum property that had recently attracted my attention.

But Miss Binstead and her friend did not attend the
meeting of the "Sunday morning club" that day. They had
not gone out. Mrs. Hargreave came down with a mes-
sage to say that Helen had a headache and was not com-
ing; and Judith was presumably helping her friend to
nurse this chimerical ailment. Personally, I had no doubt
whatever that Miss Binstead was deliberately avoiding the'

PROGRESS 165

possibility of meeting me ; and Hill was, I think, also of my
opinion. He looked up at me when Mrs. Hargreave deliv-
ered the message, as if he were about to make some com-
ment, and then one of the two Germans — both Lippmann
and Herz were there — interposed a remark and diverted
the conversation.

The talk that morning was all on the subject of music,
even Mrs. Hargreave found no opening and left after she
had been there twenty minutes or so. The stout Lippmann
was, it appeared, a very creditable performer on the 'cello,
and Herz (I found that he was the stumpy grey-haired
young man who wore a bowler with his frock-coat), al-
though he did not play any instrument, was evidently a
keen musician.

I was interested for a time, despite the acute disappoint-
ment and annoyance I was suffering. They were talking
of Wagner and of the gradual supersession of the impor-
tance of Bayreuth by the Munich performances. But soon
they began to discuss technicalities that I could not follow,
and when Lippmann went to fetch his 'cello in order
to illustrate an argument about some particular passage,
I made an excuse of work and went downstairs.

Little Herz made an apology to me. "You are, perhaps,
not interested in music," he said.

I assured him that I was, and, as a matter of fact, I
should certainly have stayed on if I had: not wanted to be
alone so that I might consider Miss Binstead's new rebuff
and a possible reply to it.

Herz was not a bad little chap, and I admired him and
Lippmann for their knowledge of and interest in music;
but directly the keenness of my attention was diverted from
their talk, I became restless and depressed; and the loud-
ness of their voices — they argued the simplest point with
tremendous heat — distracted and hurt me.

Nevertheless, when I was alone in my sitting-room, I
could almost have welcomed the diversion of their eager
argument. I felt so powerless. What could I do to break
down the influence of that mouse-coloured Helen? I de-

166 HOUSE-MATES

vised wild plans to enlist Hill's assistance, and then shrank
from the idea of showing him that I cared.

I think that I came for the first time that morning to
the very verge of asking myself why I cared so much.
The apparent emptiness of Hill's crowded room was hardly
to be accounted for by a mere impatience to justify myself
to the absent Helen Binstead. I still tried diligently to
lay all accounts to that score, but I found the system in-
creasingly difficult. It would not convincingly explain the
sudden blankness which had come to me when Mrs. Har-
greave brought her message; nor the horrible restlessness
that possessed me. I could not think of my work, I could
not contemplate any possible or impossible occupation that
would afford me the least relief or satisfaction.

Just for one moment, however, I had a glimpse of some
surcease from this torment of unquiet in the thought of
paying a surprise visit to Rose Whiting. I pictured her
as protesting, antagonistic, even violent, and as setting my-
self the task of overcoming her resistance by appealing
to her sympathy. The picture had some dream quality,
inasmuch as I saw myself immune from ultimate reproach.
She was what she was, and, however unwilling to entertain
me, she had no drastic resort that could bring me to shame.
I should have, as it were, the escape of being able to
wake myself at any minute. It was not the contemplation
of any sensual satisfaction that drew me, but the longing
for some intense struggle of the spirit with a woman. I
craved for the expression of brutality. I wanted to hurt
Rose Whiting; and it was my understanding of that desire,
no less than the fear of my visit being reported on the
third floor, that really saved me from putting my mad
scheme into practice. A dreadful image of Rose Whiting,
smiling, avariciously complacent, set me wondering what
awful outlet I might seek for the satisfaction of my brute
lust. If her body were nothing to her, she would, at least,
defend her life.

I jammed on my hat and was half-way down the street
before I realised that it was raining heavily. I hesitated

PROGRESS 167

and decided to go back for my umbrella. I could find pleas-
ure in the thought of outrage, but I could not face the sus-
picion of being eccentric, nor the small inconvenience of a
wetting. Civilisation lays such odd little snares for us.

I returned to the house for my overcoat and umbrella.
But when I had them and could face the criticism of
returning church-goers without a qualm, I could think of
nowhere to go. London on a Sunday — and a wet Sunday
at that ! — offers no temptations to the adventurous.

The memory of the Germans and their talk of music
brought me my first real relief. I had some lunch at Soho,
and walked all the way to the Carmelite Church at Kensing-
ton. In the evening I went to Farm Street.

in

I had succeeded in finding distraction for one day, but
the sense of being thwarted returned on Monday morning
and grew steadily worse during the week. All my resent-
ment focussed on Helen Binstead. She figured in my
thoughts as a subtly powerful and malignant enemy, but
I must insist that I was not a normal human being for
those few days. In my relations with the people I met and
spoke to, I was sane and ordinary enough. f I do not sup-
pose that any one I saw at that time noticed the least dif-
ference in me. I went down to Copsfield, for example, on
the Wednesday to measure up some of the work on Parkin-
son's house and give the builder his certificate; and while
I was occupied on that job, I could attend to it with my
usual capacity. But as soon as I was alone, in my rooms,
I returned to the contemplation of my grievance which
was coming to be the chief essential of the associations that
surrounded me in Keppel Street.

I had a weak, forlorn hope that I might see Helen Bin-
stead and her friend on the following Sunday — they never
went past my window, now, always turning east when they
came out — and I went up to Hill's room about twelve

168 HOUSE-MATES

o'clock. I tried to postpone my visit to an even later hour.
I had some foolish idea that if by any chance "they" did go,
it would be a point in my favour that I should be very
late in putting in an appearance. My one idea of diplomacy,
now, was to pretend to be oblivious of their existence. And
then, after a cold, nervous morning spent in trying to fritter
away the time, I was suddenly panic-stricken by the thought
that "they" might leave before I arrived.

I found Hill alone.

"No meeting this morning?" I asked.

"Herz came in for half an hour," Hill said. "No one
else." He had been reading when I came in, but he shut
up his book and threw it on to the table, and I knew by
the serious, questioning look he turned upon me that he
was ready to talk to me about the one subject I wished most
to discuss.

"I'm afraid I'm the Jonah," I said, as carelessly as I
could. "You'd better send a notice round to say that I've
been black-balled by the president."

Hill looked, I thought, a little uneasy. "It's only Helen,
you know," he said. "Just a chance the others didn't come
in this morning. Mrs. Hargreave is away, and Lippmann
has gone to see some musical friends at Sydenham. . . ."
His inflexion left the sentence open for my return to his
first statement.

"Yes, she's taken a fierce dislike to me for some reason,"
I said, and made a foolish, neighing sort of sound that
was meant for a laugh.

Hill frowned. "It's quite natural that you . . ." he be-
gan, but I interrupted him with a wilful misunderstanding.

"Perfectly natural that she should loathe the sight of
me," I said, and only just succeeded in cutting off a repe-
tition of that tittering laugh. "I'm quite ready to admit it.
I only came up to tender my resignation. I waited until
I thought they'd be all gone."

Hill knew that that was a lie, but he evidently found
an excuse for me.

"You seem to have been rather badly hit," he said.

PROGRESS 169

I really misunderstood him that time. "Oh ! no !" I said,
trying to get an effect of contempt into my voice. "It's —
it's rather riling, that's all. All this fuss, I mean, about
nothing. I don't care a curse what Miss Binstead thinks
of me — I wish you would tell her so — but I can't help feel-
ing that she's making a ridiculous ..." I could find noth-
ing better than my original "fuss about nothing."

Hill shook his head. , "Don't be an ass, Hornby," he said.
"You must surely know that that isn't the point at all."

"I don't," was all the answer I found. "Really, I don't,"
I repeated in a cooler tone. Something in his voice had
stimulated my curiosity.

"You must have known that Helen is not that kind of
woman," he said, and then added, as it seemed quite a long
time afterwards, "normally."

"Is she ever normal?" I asked.

"It is this amazing friendship — passion — that has made
such a difference to her," Hill explained.

"What passion?" I put in.

"For Judith," he said.

"I didn't know," I remarked lamely. I had no idea
what he meant.

"It happens fairly often," Hill went on. "At girls'
schools it's common enough to be used by novelists as a
certain hit; but they're a bit shy of things like this Helen-
Judith affair. I don't know why they should be."

I was still at sea and must have showed it in my face,
for Hill laughed and said : "Perhaps your evident failure
to grasp the idea is sufficient explanation of the novelists'
omission. You're typical, perhaps, of the ordinary reader —
the reader who pays. It never does to puzzle him. The
thing he — no, she, I fancy — can't recognise at sight isn't
true for the purposes of fiction."

"But — but what is it?" I asked, in the tone of one cau-
tiously and distantly observing some unpleasant insect. I
had an idea that there was a mystery behind all this sug-
gestion of Hill's. He had used the word "passion," and I
found it horribly repulsive in this connection.

170 HOUSE-MATES

Hill smiled. "You needn't be upset about it," he said.
"It's quite clean; respectable even. You see, Helen is not
the type of woman who attracts a man. She's very clever ;
if she'd been better looking or a great deal uglier, she'd
have made a success as an actress. In fact, she did make
some kind of a hit, three years ago, in that thing of Mark-
ley's — 'The Further Side.' I don't know if you saw it.
Well, anyway, she isn't the sort of girl a man falls in
love with, and she has been starved, if you know what I
mean, on that side. And she appealed to Judith. Judith
did fall in love with her in one sense. Helen was new to
her in every way; new ideas and so on. And then there
was the inevitable glamour of the stage. Judith might
have taken to Mrs. Hargreave in much the same way if
she'd happened to turn up just then instead of Helen. And,
of course, all this devotion and admiration was the purest
balm to Helen — you can understand that. . . ."

I was beginning to understand well enough to ask a
further question.

"Yes. That's all right," I said. "But, for the life of me,
I can't see how it explains Miss Binstead's loathing for
myself."

"Jealous, my dear chap," Hill said.

"What?" I gasped. "Jealous? Of me?" Surely, the
devotion she had inspired had brought Helen Binstead no
such balm as that suggestion brought to me just then. I
realised the absurdity of Hill's statement, but it was enough
for the moment that he should have made it.

"Of you or any man," he hedged.

"Does she loathe you too, then?" I asked, finding new
inspiration in his amendment.

"No, no. She's clever enough to — to make distinctions,"
he said.

"On what grounds?" I pressed him.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Of course she saw from
the beginning that you were going to fall in love with
Judith," he said.

PROGRESS 171

"Oh ! bosh !" I ejaculated. "I mean I didn't. I haven't.
I — I'm not likely to."

"Well, she thought you were," Hill returned. "And
that's the important point."

I wavered between a desire to repeat my disavowal and
an inclination to attack Miss Binstead's premature conclu-
sions, before I gave expression almost instinctively to the
thought that was now pressing into the foreground of my
consciousness.

"But it's so absurd," I said. "I mean that she — Miss
Carrington — has never given her any grounds for . . . sup-
posing that . . ."

Hill waited for me to finish, and when I resolutely shut
my mouth and refused to commit myself any further, he
looked at me with that hint of banter in his face he had
shown once or twice previously.

"How do you know ?" he asked.

I sniffed my claims to recognition out of existence.

"Why should she ?" I returned.

"Tall, well-set-up young man, with a touch of the aristo-
cratic manner . . . rather appealing blue eyes . . ." Hill
was continuing his inventory when I cut him short by ask-
ing him not to be an infernal ass.

"We rather liked the look of you, at first," he went
on, "in spite of your brass plate and your haughty air
of aloofness."

"Rot!" I said. "I was confoundedly shy."

"We hoped it might be that, until the incident on the
front steps," Hill replied.

I was getting a very unexpected picture of Wilfred
Hornby. I had never attempted to see myself on broad
lines in relation to the other occupants of the house. I had
been interested in watching them through my window ; but
it had never occurred to me that they were not only watch-
ing but also discussing me. And I could not avoid the
feeling that what Hill had said had been in some way flat-
tering. I took up that rather than his reference to my dis-
astrous mistake when I replied :

HOUSE-MATES

"It really was nervousness. I wanted tremendously to
know you. I used to watch you going by. I thought you
were an artist." That was not quite a true statement, but
I made it in all sincerity. I had temporarily forgotten my
first resolution to have nothing to do with my fellow lodg-
ers. I did not realise how amazingly I had already entered
into the life of the house.

Hill's smile was delightfully frank. "I boasted that I
should have you up here before long," he said.

"And now you're sorry," I put in.

"Oh ! we must get over this misunderstanding," he said.

"Pretty difficult," I remarked thoughtfully. "The way
you see the thing, it isn't a question of getting over an initial
prejudice, so far as Miss Binstead is concerned, so much
as ... as ..."

"Challenging her right to the supreme possession of Ju-
dith," Hill suggested.

"But I don't want ..." I began.

"No, so you said," he returned. "We'll take that for
granted. But there is a way. . . ."

"Which is ... ?" I prompted him.

"Get hold of Judith."

I knew a dozen reasons why that was impossible; but
Hill would not listen to them.

"She's quite an independent minded young woman," he
interrupted. "She's quiet, but you needn't imagine that she
just sits still and lets Helen order her about."

"She probably hates me, though," I insisted.

"She doesn't," Hill said.

"How do you know?" I begged him.

"She and I were talking about you at the theatre, last
night; — Helen wasn't there."

"And what did she say?"

"Only that it was a pity Helen had taken such a dis-
like to you. As a matter of fact, I believe Helen has
made the mistake of overdoing it rather, and put Judith's
back up."

Everything was taking a new shape for me, the house

PROGRESS 173

and its inhabitants; and more particularly the personality
of Helen Binstead. I saw her no longer as an all-powerful,
malignant spirit, but — with a faint twinge of pity — as a
rather desolate, desperate woman.

IV

Hill did not suggest any method for putting his advice
into practice, and I shrank from framing a direct question.
I felt that I could not ask him how it would be pos-
sible for me to meet Judith without Helen. But when I
went downstairs, I went with a light heart. The prospect
had been opened for me; it was no longer hidden by the
enormous obstacle of my obsession. The figure of Helen
Binstead had shrunk to life size. Moreover, she no longer
confronted me, as I had fearfully imagined, with all the
forces arrayed on her side. Hill was certainly with me;
and he had given me a delicious hope that Judith was, at
least, not fighting against me.

I was more or less content to leave my analysis at that
point. I would not frankly admit, as yet, that I had any
motive beyond the clearing of my character. That mo-
tive was quite insufficient to explain my recent emotions
or my resolutions for the future, but for a little while
longer I persuaded myself that I was a free man.

As to resolutions, however, I had nothing that could be
called a plan. I left the future to Fate ; and Fate rewarded
my confidence in her roundabout, unexpected way, by send-
ing me a mysterious visitor who seemed to have no sort
of connection with my affairs.

He came about four o'clock that same afternoon. Mr.
Pferdminger opened the door and showed him straight into
my room with the announcement, "A gentleman to see you,
Mr. Hornby."

He was a well-dressed, professional looking man; and
even as I stood up, I tried to soften that "what-the-devil"
air which I was so apt to put on with strangers. I had a
wild, impulsive hope that this might be an unexpected client.

174 HOUSE-MATES

"Mr. Hornby?" the stranger asked. He was obviously
nervous. I recognised his type at once; I had seen his
likeness in one of our church-wardens at Hampstead.

"Yes, my name is Hornby," I said, trying not to be too
stiff. "Won't you sit down?"

He thanked me, fumbled for a moment with his top
hat and gloves, and then took a chair by the table.

I think I had begun to have my suspicions of him even
then. His manner was not that of a man who had come
to offer his patronage. And I had a queer prejudice against
some effect of his clothes. I cannot say quite what it was ;
perhaps the stiff straightness of his striped trousers, or
the pearl buttons on the cloth uppers of his patent leather
boots.

"You want to see me?" I prompted him. "I don't think
I remember you. . . ."

"No, no, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you be-
fore," he began bravely, supported by the obvious correcti-
tude of the opening. "The fact is — I'm afraid this is a
rather unconventional call. You must forgive me. . . .
I ..." He dropped his voice and mumbled something, of
which I only caught the word "distressing."

I did not help him, and he evidently found the task of
explaining his call an exceedingly embarrassing one. He
looked down, frowned, and tapped with his fingers on the
table. He kept his gaze fixed on his finger exercises as he
continued: "The fact is ... I don't know if you've been
long in this house . . . perhaps you don't know any of the
other — residents ?"

He waited, without looking up, for my reply.

"Some of them," I said.

"You may have met a Mrs. Hargreave?" he suggested,
still staring at the tablecloth.

"Yes," I agreed tepidly.

And then the colour of his rather ruddy face deepened
to purple, he threw himself on my mercy.

"I am her husband," he said, and I think if he had looked
at me honestly I might have been sorry for him. I had

PROGRESS 175

certainly championed his cause in that talk with Hill; but
he looked so prosperous, and yet so furtive, that I could
not, now, bring myself to pity him.

"I know Mrs. Hargreave very slightly," I said.

"Oh! precisely, I quite understand that," he returned.
"And I don't suppose for a moment that you know any-
thing about her history."

"I know something," I said.

"You know that she deserted me and our children,"
he said in a low, solemn voice.

My annoyance with the man was steadily growing. "A
friend of mine told me something of the kind," I admitted,
"but really I don't know what it has got to do with me."

"I suppose she has a great many friends in the house?"
he asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"Are the other people here mostly women?"

I believe I had some vague idea of defending the char-
acter of the house when I replied: "Oh! dear, no! mostly
men."

Hargreave nodded thoughtfully. "Keppel Street, of
course, has a bad name," he said, "but it doesn't follow that
every house in it . . ."

He obviously meant me to help him out of that, but I
preferred to keep silence.

He waited a moment or two before he went on : "I hope
you will forgive me, Mr. Hornby; I know how unconven-
tional all this must seem to you. I am truly sorry to be
disturbing you like this. But would you mind answering
one question? Would you mind telling me if Mrs. Har-
greave receives many visitors here — er — in the evening, for
instance? I don't mean to imply that you would know
such a thing — I admit it is impertinent to ask you, at all —
except for the fact of your — your position — in the house,
I mean . . . your window ... so near the front door,
and so on."

I thought his trouble had slightly turned his brain, but
I was still unable to summon up the least feeling of sym-

176 HOUSE-MATES

pathy with his distress. My only wish was to be rid of
him. I stood up.

"I'm sorry I can't help you," I said. "When I am at the
window, I am always working, and I don't keep any sort
of watch on the front doer."

He got to his feet, also, and began to collect his be-
longings. "Then you've no idea?" he said, as he began
his retreat to the hall.

"Absolutely none," I said, and showed him out.

On reflection I decided that the man was jealous; and
that was the explanation I put forward when I told the
story to Hill, whom I caught in the hall a few minutes after
Hargreave had gone.

Hill was in' a hurry. He was going down to Fleet Street
with his notice of the first performance he had attended
the night before, and he agreed without consideration. "I'll
tell Mrs. H. when she comes back," he said, as he went out.

I had a re-action that evening after tea.

I liked Hill, and we had made, I thought, a great ad-
vance towards friendship that morning, but I blamed him
for being too casual. I began to think over that reported
fragment of conversation at the theatre, and wondered why
it should have been so inconclusive. If they were agreed
that Miss Binstead was being silly about me, why had not
Miss Carrington come down to Hill's room? Why had
not Hill urged her to come? As far as I could see, the
present state of affairs might go on indefinitely.

Also, for some reason that I did not care to examine,
I was a little uneasy concerning Miss Carrington's friend-
ship wjth Hill. He seemed to be very much in her con-
fidence. Helen Binstead was not jealous of him, but cer-
tainly her judgments were not infallible. It was absurd
that she should be jealous of me. If she were jealous?
After all, it was quite probable that my original judgment
was correct, that she had taken a violent dislike to me,
and deliberately encouraged her hatred by continually mis-
reading my actions and what she judged to be my inten-
tions.

PROGRESS 177

As to the Hargreaves, I was inclined to dismiss them
from my thoughts. I had decided, like Alice, that "they
were both very unpleasant characters."

I was back in my shell again that evening.

I had new lights on the Hargreave case two days later.
Mrs. Hargreave came down to my room after tea. I was
working, but she made no apology for interrupting me, al-
though I stood by my drawing-board, pencil in hand, waiting
for her to explain the object of her visit.

"I hear that my husband has been to see you," she began,
and sat down with a confidence that entirely ignored my
occupation.

"Yes, he came in Sunday," I replied snappishly.

"To ask questions about me?"

"Yes," I said, and by way of usefully rilling the time
I sharpened my pencil.

"Is your work very important, Mr. Hornby?" was her
next question.

I made a little doubtful noise that might have meant
anything.

"Or were your sympathies engaged by my husband's
grievances ?" she went on, with a faint air of chaffing me.

"They most certainly were not," I replied with emphasis.

"You didn't like him?" she asked, pretending surprise.

"No," I said.

"But you think 7 ought to?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I can not see what your
matrimonial troubles have to do with me," I said.

She smiled. "You don't believe in helping other people ?"
she remarked, and something in her tone reminded me
that I had recently been blaming Hill for not helping me
in the Binstead affair.

"Oh ! well, no ; it isn't that exactly," I said.

"But . . ." she helped me.

178 HOUSE-MATES

I was not sure, but it seemed safe to suggest that hers
was not a case in which I cared to take one side or the
other.

"I may take it that you didn't answer my husband's ques-
tions, then?" she said.

"I did not," I returned. "I was distinctly rude to him."

"Yes. I can believe that," she commented thoughtfully.

"I don't think I'm usually rude to people," I asserted, but
she took no notice of that.

"Did you snub him out of existence at once," she went
on, "or did you get any idea of what he wanted to know
about me?"

"I inferred that he was jealous," I said. "He asked me
if you had many visitors — in the evening — and that sort of
thing; and I told him I had no idea. He seemed to think
that I spend my time watching the front door."

"He wants to divorce me, you see," Mrs. Hargreave
explained.

I was startled into a new interest. "Well, you wouldn't
be sorry if he did, would you?" I asked.

"How very unconventional of you," she said with a
laugh.

I had not thought of that. "But you want to be free,
don't you ?" I asked.

"Not on those terms," she told me, and then continued:
"But as you've said, it has nothing to do with you."

"I'm interested, nevertheless," I said.

"You're an odd mixture, Mr. Hornby," she returned;
"a cross between a live human being and the bundles of
convention that generally try to pass themselves off as live
people. Do you think you've a chance of being born soon,
or are you trying to shut yourself tighte'r into your coffin
or whatever you call it?"

I found that question worth a moment's consideration.
I had not adopted my metaphor at that time, but I was
dimly aware of some change that was taking place in me.

"I think I've altered a good deal since I came to this
house," I said.

PROGRESS 179

Mrs. Hargreave nodded encouragingly. "It's a queer lit-
tle world, this house," she agreed. "Queerer than I thought
if it's bringing you out of your shell," she added.

I came back to a contemplation of that remark after-
wards, but at the time I was too anxious to divert the
conversation from this criticism of myself to take any
notice.

"I don't see why you object to Mr. Hargreave wanting
to ..." I began, and hesitated. Any frank statement
seemed, I thought, too brutal.

"To divorce me ?" she put in calmly.

I nodded. "You want your freedom, don't you ?" I said.

She had been so sane and quiet up to this point that
I had completely forgotten her tirade upstairs after the
Whiting business.

"I suppose men of your sort will never understand our
position," she said in a new tone, and before I could cut
her off, she began again on the admittedly hopeless task
of enlightening me.

I can understand her, now, but sane and reasonable as
her "principle" now appears to me, she was, I must admit,
a very unconvincing pleader. She was so dogmatic and
so restricted when she mounted that platform. She would
not permit the hint of any alternative to her doctrine. She
belonged to the older woman's rights school, and was one
of those who carried over their fanaticism into the "Mili-
tant Suffragette" movement.

Her "right," as she put it to me that evening, was the
right of occupation and self-expression. She had done with
child-bearing, and she did not ask for sexual love, or for
sexual admiration. She demanded possibilities for the free-
ing of her individuality, but she would not accept them
at the cost of admitting herself in the wrong. That, in-
deed, was her "principle."

"My husband can only imagine one reason for my leav-
ing him," she said; "the only reason that would appeal to
him." (Incidentally, I believed that.) "So, now, he wants
to make things easy for himself — he wants to marry again,

180 HOUSE-MATES

of course — by divorcing me. And why should I confess
to a weakness of that kind? I would acknowledge it in
a moment, if I had it, but I'm not going to put myself
in the wrong just to satisfy his sexual cravings."

She had no sort of sympathy with her husband, and I
still think that she was wrong in that exclusion. She was
so fanatic when it came to any attack on that tremendous
"right" of hers. She clenched her mind, as it were, in
a final resolution never to give one least advantage to all
that immense mass of opinion which was embodied for
her in the person of Hargreave. She was of the stuff that
makes martyrs, but some martyrs are merely pig-headed.

The effect of her argument upon me was to put my back
up. Women were putting men's backs up even then, some
years before they made a regular profession of it. And
I should probably have attempted some perfectly useless
defence if we had not been interrupted by a tap at the
door.

Mrs. Hargreave did not hear it, and it is possible that my
"Come in" was also inaudible above the steady eloquence
of her exposition, but she stopped when the door opened.
I think it must have been the change of expression in my
face and attitude that startled her.

VI

I received a smile that I counted as my first — the other
was not meant for me — and then she turned to Mrs. Har-
greave, who was now looking round over her shoulder,
and said : "I suppose you've completely forgotten that you're
taking me to the theatre to-night?"

Mrs. Hargreave got up at once. "My dear, is it so late ?"
she said. "Mr. Hornby and I have been arguing." (I had
not said a word since she had opened her pet subject.)
"Wait for me while I just go upstairs. It will do if I
change my blouse, I suppose ? Where's Helen ?"

"She's up there," Judith said. "We've been quarrelling,
rather."

PROGRESS 181

I had an instant's hope that I was the subject of it.
And here was my longed for opportunity: Mrs. Hargreave
had gone and I was alone with Judith and free to make
any explanation I wished. And I had not a word to say.
I had not an idea how to begin the most formal con-
versation.

"She is rather splendid, isn't she?" Judith said. The
door was still open and she sat down near it in a desolate,
unfriendly chair that had been left alone to furnish that
bleak corner.

"Mrs. Hargreave? Oh! yes, rather," I said.

"She is so tremendously in earnest."

I repeated my former remark.

After that came a silence that began to grow embar-
rassing. I was standing up by my drawing-board and the
whole length of the room separated us, but I was afraid
to move.

"I'm interrupting you," she said after a tense interval.
"Do go on working."

"Oh! no! I'm not," I said eagerly. "I wasn't working
when you came in, I mean."

She was almost invisible in the shadow of her corner by
the door, and I wished that I could get over to the hearth-
rug, but I felt unequal to that undertaking. I found some
small consolation in the reflection that it was her turn
to speak.

"We're going to see 'Zaza,' " she said. "Do you know
it?"

"No, I don't," I replied. "I've heard it's rather good."

"Mrs. Hargreave has only got two seats. That's why
Miss Binstead isn't coming," she explained inconsequently.

I made my first sane comment then by saying: "Your
quarrel wasn't serious?"

She laughed. "Oh! no," she assured me.

It was an opening. I had only to say that I was afraid
Miss Binstead didn't like me, and the thing was prac-
tically done. Instead of that I said:

182 HOUSE-MATES

"You go to the theatre pretty often, I suppose?"

"Whenever I can," she replied.

And the precious remainder of that solemn ten min-
utes was spent in bandying the stupid clinches of a suburban
tea-party.

VII

I was not alone with her again for six weeks. I have
a strong inclination to jump that interval. I am hampered
again by my characteristic distaste for speaking or writing
of things that touch some tender pride of my inner life.

I could not discuss my brief religious ecstasy with my
mother. I was afraid of exposing it to the least criticism,
even though that criticism took the form of mistaken praise.
I knew that my mother would translate my emotions into
the terms of her own worship, and I was as sensitive as
any artist who dreads that the meaning of his work will be
misinterpreted. I was so keenly aware of the beauty of my
own emotions that I dared not express them.

My disinclination to speak of my engagement to Gladys
in the presence of Geddes, or Kemplay, or Horton-Smith
was another symptom of the same weakness. I knew that
the strained exaggeration of the stereotyped phrases we use
to describe beauty would not produce a true impression upon
their minds. It was not that I was afraid to do Gladys
any injustice, my feeling was still personal ; egotistical per-
haps. Her beauty was the thing 7 saw. In a sense I had
created it by my vision of her. If Geddes, for example,
had met and admired her, he would still have failed to
appreciate the work of art I treasured in my own mind.
Gladys, however, herself destroyed that illusion and set me
free to describe her. After my image had been broken, I
saw her with even more critical eyes than Geddes would
have brought to his appraisal. In the same way, when my
religious ecstasy faded I could smile — a little tenderly,
nevertheless — at my exhausted emotion of worship. But,

PROGRESS 183

now, I have a treasure of beauty that fills my whole life,
and I dread to belittle it by the weakness of my artistry.

Indeed, I am not a true artist. I have the power of
conception, but not of creation. In my drawing, as in my
writing, I present but the pale, weak model of my desire.

And in this thing that I am now stumbling at, there is,
in fact, no medium which would portray my thought of
Judith clear and whole. I can at the best only suggest
an outline which will take shape in the reader's mind as
the figure or index of a type. It is so futile to write that
the colour of her eyes was a live, clear grey; that her hair
was brown with a kind of petulant twist which asserted its
individuality against the most patient endeavour of any
hair-dresser; that her nose was straight and rather long;
or that her teeth were white as the sudden foam on a
dark sea.

Such a foolish catalogue as this, however prolonged,
gives no effect of the particular quality her beauty had
for me. Another woman might have her features and
colouring and fail completely to attract my notice — I might
even criticise such a woman ; say that she was plain. Per-
haps Judith may be plain. If there is some idealised abso-
lute of feminine beauty, I can very well understand that
she would fail to pass the test such an ideal would im-
pose. Men do not turn to look after her in the street.

But to me, from that moment she turned and unknowingly
smiled up at my window, she was the perfect woman. And
I knew it without any further possible shadow of doubt
from the time she sat on that lonely chair by the door,
and the two of us, nervous and trembling, approached the
knowledge that this was a meeting beyond any remem-
bered experience. We talked nonsense, and I am glad,
now, to remember how foolish I was. I had come all un-
prepared into the presence of something that was wonder-
ful and eternal, something out of space and time; and I
feel that it was appropriate that I should have blushed and
stammered and confessed my ineptitude.

And most certainly I could neither have drawn her that

184 HOUSE-MATES

evening, nor have told the colour of her eyes, nor whether
her nose was long or short.

What could it matter how she looked?

She was Judith,

IX

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS

THE general impression of those six weeks remains in
my mind now with something like the effect of a train
journey. My attention was continually being snatched by
the incidents of every-day life, and some of them come
back to me with the vividness of a scene observed through
a window. But the dominant effect is of my longing to
get to the journey's end. I was travelling towards some
goal that I could not visualise, but that was undoubtedly a
resting place; and until I reached it all else was nothing
but a momentary distraction.

I cannot, however, fit my occasional sights of Judith into
the metaphor. They constituted stopping-places that have
no parallel in the tedious movement of a train journey. For
it was, indeed, only during those short hours when I was
no longer conscious of travel that I made any real prog-
ress— although there were times when those intervals seemed
to indicate that I was flying horribly backwards.

I was groping, then, in the black darkness that surrounds
the unintuitive young lover; or it may be, rather, that I
was too intuitive and that my intuitions springing from a
purely masculine psychology were, now and then, gro-
tesquely false. Certainly, my deductions could not have
been influenced by any sane logic. I was immensely en-
couraged or disheartened by the most trivial suggestions;
and in some instances I completely overlooked indications
that had a real significance.

185

186 HOUSE-MATES

Helen Binstead was the chief cause of my misinterpre-
tations. I had, happily, lost my obsession concerning her
omnipotence for evil, but I still recognised that she was
my one important enemy — and in that inference, at least,
I was not deceived. Where I made so important a mis-
take was in my failure to understand her relations with
Judith.

Writing, now, with a more or less clear explanation
of those once mysterious signs, I can smile at my own blind-
ness; but as I enter again into the feelings I experienced
during that six weeks, I know that it was impossible I
should have interpreted what I took for evidence, in any
other way.

II

Judith and Helen Binstead were in Hill's room on the
Sunday following our first tete-a-tete. I had seen Mrs.
Hargreave again in the interval, but she was not there that
morning. There were, however, three other people present
besides Hill, himself: namely, an actor and his wife and
little Herz. The actor — I have forgotten his name — was
playing at a West End theatre, and he had been invited
to meet Judith, with the idea — as I soon learnt with a
strange twinge of dismay — of helping her to obtain an en-
gagement in a travelling company that was going out after
Christmas with the piece that he was playing in at, I think
it was, the Criterion.

The actor was a smallish man with a good deal of man-
ner, and I wondered what influence he could possibly have
in recommending Miss Carrington. He was quite unknown
to me by name, and dropped out of the theatrical world
years ago, but it appeared that he was a popular member
of a club called the "Green Room" in Leicester Square,
and that quite a lot of theatrical log-rolling was done from
that centre.

His wife was a tall, elaborate looking woman with a
collection of handsome features that did not harmonise well

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 187

when they were seen at close quarters, but might have
been effective on the stage. I do not remember that she
added much to the conversation, but she went in for ex-
pressive gesture on suitable occasions, and had a habit
of commenting on Hill's stories — he told several that morn-
ing a propos of stage life — by staring immensely into the
circumambient and saying "Isn't — that — Rich!" in a voice
that was meant to exhibit the amazing depths of her
appreciation.

I sat on a pile of books by the wall and said nothing.
I was out of my element and knew it, but I was always
dumb in Judith's presence after that first bright exception
on the day of our introduction. What I longed to say was
that life in a provincial touring company was quite unsuit-
able for Miss Carrington, but I had not the courage for
that. So I kept silence and watched her when I dared.

Curiously enough my chief source of encouragement was
at the same time a cause of uneasiness on another score.
Judith herself responded with very little warmth to the
actor's bustling assurance that he could certainly get her
the part. He pretended a kind of examination, at first,
and I loathed the way he looked at her, but he cut that
piece of acting very quickly, and came to the part he found
more sympathetic : to the playing of the patron and man
of influence. (I can see his spruce little figure, now; he
was dressed in a grey suit that had an appearance of being
sharp at the edges, with a little black and white check bow
that perked neatly out of his double collar; and lavender
suede gloves that he kept in his hand and used to gesticu-
late with. And his boots were quite the richest brown I
have ever seen.)

I was delighted that his boast of patronage produced so
little effect upon Miss Carrington, but I wished that her
rather cool reception of his assurances had been due to
another cause. For after she had thanked him, she made
it plain that she would not accept the part unless there were
a place for Helen in the same company.

I wish I could describe the way she spoke. Her voice

188 HOUSE-MATES

and manner contrasted so delightfully with the glib insin-
cerity of the actor and his wife — and Helen Binstead, too,
had caught something of that theatrical intensity which
can give a false value to the simplest expression. But Ju-
dith, even then, had an earnestness that showed through
her girlish embarrassment. She blushed when she answered
the man, and she did not use words like "awfully" or
"frightfully." Her speech had been pruned by those two old
Puritans with whom she had lived for five years ; and if
her zest for life had been strong enough to revolt against
confinement within those little spaces to which they would
have restricted her, something of their influence, perhaps
of their timidity, still remained with her.

The actor pursed his mouth and thoughtfully smacked
his left hand with his gloves.

"If we could find a part for Miss Binstead?" he repeated.
"There isn't one at present, but I might get hold of the
author and ask him to write one in for her."

Helen's eyes glowed at him not less than her speech, but
I saw Hill's smile and knew by that how grotesque had
been the little man's boast.

"Get him to write a play for them while you're about
it," Hill put in.

"I happen to know him very well, you know," the actor
went on, quite unruffled. "In fact, in a way I discovered
him. Gave him his first chance, and he hasn't forgotten
it. And, besides that, I've helped him with his stage tech-
nique. He's a clever chap, but simply knew nothing about
the stage when he began to write."

(He mentioned the author's name at least four times dur-
ing that speech, but I prefer not to repeat it.)

"If you could find a part for Miss Binstead ?" Judith put
in when she found a chance. "Even an understudy . . ."

"Ah !" the little actor man interrupted. "An understudy !
What do you think, Delia?"

"For Mrs. Henniker?" his wife answered, as if she were
debating a plan to save the nation.

"For Mrs. Henniker !" he repeated with an air of sudden

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 189

conviction. "You've hit it, Delia. We'll put Miss Bin-
stead in to understudy Muriel Gordon."

Judith was warmer in her expression of gratitude this
time, but I was not afraid. I had been watching Hill, and
guessed that these two engagements would never be made.

He confirmed my supposition as soon as the actor and his
wife had gone.

"I'm sorry," he said, addressing Helen and Judith; "but
I never thought it was much use."

I expected Helen to resent that. She had glowed again
at the little actor, after he had definitely booked her to
understudy Miss Muriel Gordon; but she took it quite
quietly.

"Of course they wouldn't take out a special understudy
on a tour like that," she said. "Judith would understudy
Miss Gordon if she played 'Jenny.' "

I leant back against the wall in pure amazement. I am
not sure that my mouth was not open.

Hill grinned. "Friend Hornby isn't used to our stage
currency," he said. "That's the way we go on, you know.
It's a kind of Eastern diplomacy without the dignity."

I found a voice at last. "He offers you something he
knows isn't possible," I said, "and you know it isn't pos-
sible. . . ."

"Yes, and he knows that you know it isn't possible," Hill
concluded.

"And all the same ... ?" I said.

"We part with a very fine opinion of ourselves and of
each other," Hill said. "But, mark one stipulation, all of
us here, except Helen, are amateurs. There was a big
gallery."

"Deliver me!" I remarked elliptically and looked up to
find that Judith was watching me with, I thought, a distinct
frown of disapproval.

"Don't you ..." I began timidly, but Miss Binstead cut
me short.

"Of course, you're not used to it," she said, glowering

190 HOUSE-MATES

at me. "I suppose you think I was very insincere to say
what I did."

I was honest enough to shrug my shoulders, and then
little Herz came between us by saying:

"It is the same with artists and with musicians. I have
seen it. To keep up the appearance makes so much with
them."

"And don't you think he meant it about my part, either ?"
Judith asked, looking at Hill.

"He meant it all right," Hill replied. "But I don't think
he really has much influence. Still, he might work that."

"I shan't take it," Judith said, standing up; and she put
an affectionate arm round Miss Binstead's shoulders. <

I went downstairs, very depressed. I could not under-
stand that friendship, nor the attraction of the stage.
Neither accorded with my worshipping of Judith, and yet
I worshipped her none the less. I felt that, if only I could
talk to her, she would make it all clear to me. Also, I
wondered why my criticism of the little actor's insincerity
and swagger had offended her. For woven deep into the
fabric of my subconsciousness was the certainty that in
some way she and I knew each other quite intimately.

in

I believe that Basil Meares and his wife must have joined
our community just about this time. They took the place
of two of the Germans who had shared a bedroom and a
sitting-room on the second floor and who had held no com-
munication with the rest of us, not even with their own
countrymen.

Meares was a tall, dark, handsome man with a black
beard trimmed to a neat point that gave him the look of
a naval captain. His wife was a bright little brown-eyed
creature, with all too evident false teeth. Hill made their
acquaintance before they had been in the house ten days,
and I met them in his room for the first time one Sun-

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 191

day — I think it must have been about the second week in
November.

They came from Australia, and both of them had Aus-
tralian accents. Meares had a mining property — or an op-
tion on one — somewhere up country, and had come over
to London to form a company to develop it. He was a
grave, quiet chap who seemed content to listen to our
conversation, and only spoke when he was directly ad-
dressed. His wife, however, had an eager flow of chatter;
and I remember being struck by her longing to see snow.
She often expressed the hope that it was going to be a
hard winter. She had lived in New South Wales all her
life and had never, as she explained, seen snow falling, al-
though she had once or twice seen it, from a distance, lying
on the upper slopes of Mount Townsend.

I thought the Meares a very uninteresting couple at first,
but Hill did not agree with me.

"If only they would tell us something about Australia,"
I said to him one day, "they might amuse us a little."

"If they would tell us something about their past lives,"
he amended.

"Nothing to tell," I suggested.

"People aren't usually so careful to hide nothing," he
said.

"Oh! well, do they?" I asked. "They simply don't talk
about anything."

"She does," Hill returned, "and so does he, about his
business, when you get him alone — try it and see. But
neither of them has a word to say about what they have
been doing for the last ten years. We don't even know what
boat they came over in."

"Don't delude yourself into finding a mystery about the
Meares," I said. "They are as ordinary as I am."

And presently Mrs. Meares became a kind of ally of
mine.

I did not encourage her at first. I was too shy of any-
thing approaching a confidence to take her advice, but there
was for a time an unspoken understanding between us.

192 HOUSE-MATES

She began it by coming down to my room one morning,
to ask if I could lend her a sheet of note paper. Mr. Hill
was out, she explained, and she did not care to bother
the "young ladies" upstairs. I believe the reason for her
intrusion was perfectly genuine. She had a colonial free-
dom from the conventional hesitations that would have
stopped me in such a case. And then, having introduced
the subject of the "young ladies," she rattled on without
further excuse.

"Miss Binstead's rather one of the stand-off sort, isn't
she?" Mrs. Meares said confidentially. "She scares me.
She looks at you as if you were trying to rob her of some-
thing. I don't mean 'you' particularly, of course — just any
one, unless it's Mr. Hill. But then he's so nice with every
one. You English people are a bit stiff, aren't you? Not
that I'm not English, too, but we're different somehow, in
Australia. . . ." She elaborated that a little before she
came back to what was the chief intention of her speech,
by saying : "But you do agree with me about Miss Binstead,
don't you, Mr. Hornby?"

"Really, I hardly know her at all," I said, trying not
to conform too nearly to the type of "stiff" Englishman
she had indicated.

"But Miss Carrington is quite different, isn't she?" the
little woman ran on. "I do think she's so good-looking,
don't you ? That's the type I admire, and I'm sure you must,
too; as an artist, now, Mr. Hornby? I don't say she's the
type that takes most men's fancy; but there's something
so steady about her, if you know what I mean."

I was horribly confused and a little annoyed; but at the
same time I was glad to have a woman ally. Mrs. Har-
greave was not actively against me as an individual, but
I was a representative of what was to her the general enemy ;
and it was very unlikely that she would do anything to help
me in making the nearer acquaintance of the two girls she
had accepted in a vague way as disciples.

I suppose I mumbled some qualified agreement with Mrs.
Meares' enthusiasm.

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 193

She hesitated a moment as if doubtful whether she could
not risk a franker statement and then apparently decided
to keep on the safe ground of generalities.

I did not help her. Mixed with my other feelings was
dismay at the thought that my devotion had been so evi-
dent. I wondered whether every one in the house knew?
I remembered that on one or two occasions I had tried to
beseech Judith with my eyes; and I blushed to find that
Mrs. Meares, certainly, and perhaps her husband or Herz,
had been watching me and had understood.

My instinctive desire to cover my tracks took the usual
form of an attempt to display sangfroid. Mrs. Meares had
drifted on into talk about the stage and I cut in by saying
that I thought it a very silly profession. I meant to make
it quite plain, at least, that the stage had no glamour for me.

"I know what you mean, Mr. Hornby," Mrs. Meares said
with a look that was meant to establish a confidence. "If
I'd had a daughter, I should never have thought of letting
her be an actress. But it's just a fancy that takes girls
for a time."

"Oh ! I dare-say Miss Binstead and her friend may do very
well on the stage," I said, and immediately reproached my-
self for having been disloyal. Yet as I spoke I had been
proud of being able to throw a slight on Judith's choice of
a profession.

Mrs. Meares screwed up her bright little brown eyes
into a smile that indulged my boyishness.

"I daresay they may — if they go on with it," she said,
and then began to apologise for interrupting my work.
She had, however, a further advance to make, before she
left me. It came in the middle of her farewell speech.

". . . Meares is very interested in architecture," was
the sentence that made the connection, and from that she
came to the fact of her husband's reserve being "nothing
but shyness. He'd never have come down interrupting you
like this," she went on, "but he'd be right down glad to
have a talk with you any time, Mr. Hornby, if you cared
to come up in the evening."

194 HOUSE-MATES

"I don't see why Mr. Hill should have it all his own way,"
she concluded gaily. ''We're going to have a club, too."

I thought over that proposition for the rest of the morn-
ing. When a woman draws an inference she accepts it as
an ultimate and unchallengeable fact. A man continues
to examine his inference at leisure, and usually finds good
cause for doubting it. I had been sure at the time that the
little Australian was suggesting that I might meet Judith
in the Meares apartment; but by lunch-time I was per-
suaded that she had meant nothing of the kind.

IV

Nevertheless when two days later I received an invita-
tion from the second floor, I had no hesitation about the an-
swer I returned. Mrs. Meares had sent me one of her visit-
ing cards. She had added, "Mr. and" before the engraved
"Mrs. Basil Meares," and below it: — "At home, this
evening — 9 p.m. to n p.m. Conversation and good com-
pany." I acknowledged the joke by sending up a formal
note of acceptance.

But after I had thus committed myself, I suffered a
period of uneasiness and apprehension. I had no confi-
dence in the tact of my ally. My first fear was that she
might have sent a duplicate of that card up to the third
floor; and when I had dismissed that on the ground that
such an invitation would certainly have been refused by
Miss Binstead, and that Mrs. Meares must have been sure
of her entertainment before she enticed me with the promise
of "good company"; I had a horrible misgiving that she
would do something even more foolish in the course of
the evening.

I pictured her making obvious plans to give me an op-
portunity for talking alone with Judith; or, worse still,
she might drop some terrible hint to Judith, herself ! And
behind those misgivings I had, no doubt, a reluctance to
class myself with the Meares or to accept any help from

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 195

them. I was still too fresK from Hampstead and Lin-
coln's Inn to stand on my own legs, and I was afraid that
I might go down in Judith's opinion if I appeared on such
confidential terms with the Meares as the demonstration
of a mutual understanding would suggest — an understanding
on that subject above all others!

My apprehensions were increased when after I had gone
upstairs to find Mrs. Meares and her husband alone she
gave me a smile that was an unmistakable acknowledg-
ment of some agreement between us and said, "We're sorry
neither Mr. Hill nor Miss Binstead can come after all;
they've gone to a first night together, so there'll only be
the four of us !"

I was on the verge of making some excuse to get out
of the room when Judith came in; and for the first half
hour or so afterwards I suffered an agony of nervous-
ness. I am sure my manner was insufferably stilted, and
whenever I looked at Mrs. Meares, my eyes, I have been
told since, were "as hard as steel." I certainly remember
that the one thought in my mind was to intimidate her into
silence on one particular topic.

Perhaps my evident nervousness had some effect on Mrs.
Meares. Her behaviour that evening was certainly above
reproach. I still think, however, that my apprehensions
were justified. I am sure she was quite capable of mak-
ing the mistake I had dreaded, but she was extraordinarily
quick in her intuitions, and her little brown eyes took note
of everything.

We were all four a trifle embarrassed during that first
half-hour, but afterwards we succeeded in making the
Meares talk about Australia. She had quite a lot of inter-
esting information, and a fund of little anecdotes about the
life inland. Her husband came in now and again with a
grave foot-note of corroboration.

I helped them with intelligent questions as well as I
could and tried not to watch Judith too openly. We sat in
a semicircle round the fire, and she faced me across the
width of the hearth-rug, so that unless I pointedly fixed my

196 HOUSE-MATES

attention on Mr. or Mrs. Meares, I was conscious of a
difficulty in avoiding Judith's glance. I tried staring into
the fire, until I saw that she was doing that, too, and I be-
came afraid that our unanimity might appear concerted.
When I happened to meet her eyes, I tried to make my
face blankly inexpressive. /

But despite my immense preoccupation with the con-
sciousness of Judith's presence, I noticed one odd little
piece of confusion on the part of Mrs. Meares.

She used the word "hinterland" instead of "up-country"
and I should certainly not have remarked the change of
language if she had not underlined it by a most unneces-
sary explanation. She pulled herself up in the middle
of the sentence, and her false teeth came together with a
queer little click. "I got that from my brother-in-law, he
was in the Boer War," she said the next moment. Meares
said nothing; he was filling his pipe and kept his head
down.

She went on briskly with her story after that interrup-
tion, and I thought nothing of it at the time, but later it
came to me that she had, for some inexplicable reason,
been afraid.

Presently we were offered biscuits and the choice of
cocoa or whiskey. Meares was the only one of us who
took whiskey — and then Mrs. Meares said that she had been
"doing all the talking" and suggested that Judith and I
should contribute a little autobiography. She nailed me
by way of making a beginning. It was like being asked
to sing or recite at a party.

"Nothing of the least interest has ever happened to me,"
I protested, and looking back, now, I feel that the state-
ment was particularly well justified at that time.

"Oh! come now," Mrs. Meares responded. "I'm sure
you've had your adventures."

"Absolutely none," I insisted. "Home, school, office, and
now an attempt within the last two months to set up in
private practice; that's the whole of my adventure up to
the present time."

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 197

"People alive?" Meares put in unexpectedly in his deep,
melancholy voice.

"My father died years ago," I said, "and my mother
last September . . ."

"Basil ! you shouldn't have asked that," Mrs. Meares put
in quickly, and then she turned to me and said, "I am sorry,
Mr. Hornby; but of course we couldn't know, could we?"

"Of course not," I said, and hurried on to cover my em-
barrassment by saying, "Certainly I was engaged once; if
you call that an adventure."

"Well!" remarked Mrs. Meares on a note of genuine
surprise.

"But it was the most conventional affair you ever heard
of," I went on. I had no intention of leaving my announce-
ment unexplained. "She was my cousin, and my uncle
and aunt are rather well-off. We weren't either of us the
least in love with one another; but we were somehow ex-
pected to get engaged and so we did." I stopped abruptly,
with a sudden twinge of regret. I remembered that scene
on the Heath when I had proposed to Gladys, and the
thought of her came back to me as the memory of some-
thing that had once been a very essential part of my life.
I had undoubtedly been very fond of her, once.

"And who broke it off?" asked Mrs. Meares.

"Oh! well, I daresay I wasn't altogether satisfactory,"
I said, trying to cover Gladys's act of treason. "No pros-
pects and so on, you understand. She's engaged to a man
called Morrison Blake, now — perhaps you've heard of him?"

"I have. He's an expert in antiques," Meares put iri
solidly.

"That's the chap," I said cheerfully.

"And you weren't heartbroken?" Mrs. Meares asked,
with the excellent intention of reinstating my eligibility, I
suppose.

"Oh! good Heavens, no!" I said. "I admire my cousin
very much but . . . but nothing more than that."

Mrs. Meares nodded. "Just as well you didn't go on with
it," she said, and I was afraid that she was going to make

198 HOUSE-MATES

some gauche remark; but whether because she noticed my
nervousness or realised instinctively the necessity for finer
tact, she abruptly changed the subject by turning to Judith
and saying,

"Well, now, really it's your turn, Miss Carrington."

Judith leaned a little forward and clasped her hands to-
gether.

"I think my story is rather like Mr. Hornby's," she said.
"All — all — oh! I don't know how to say it — all inside, if
you know what I mean." She looked at me despairingly
for help and I got in front of Mrs. Meares by saying,

"That night of the Whiting row began lots of things
with me." I looked for some response to that, but found
only an appearance of perplexity. "I met Hill that night
for the first time," I explained.

"Meeting Helen made a tremendous difference to me,"
Judith said, and I felt as if I had been snubbed.

"Why?" I asked.

She recognised the note of antagonism in my voice.

"She was so splendid," she said challenging me.

"But you don't say why," I returned.

"Don't you think Helen is splendid ?" Judith said, turning
to Mrs. Meares.

"Well, I hardly know her, you see," Mrs. Meares said
tactfully.

"You know her quite as well as Mr. Hornby does,"
Judith returned quietly.

"I don't know that I've expressed any opinion one way
or the other," I put in.

"But you don't like her, do you?" Judith asked.

"Well, she doesn't like me," I retorted.

I wish Mrs. Meares had not cut across the conversation
at that point. Judith and I were almost quarrelling, but we
were really speaking to one another for the first time. We
had both admitted so certainly that the animosity of Helen
Binstead was an obstacle, and I was hoping to hear some
suggestion for surmounting it when Mrs. Meares discon-
nected us by saying:

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 199

"Well, to me it seems an adventure, Miss Carrington,
that you should be living in a house like this. One can
see you weren't brought up to it, if you'll excuse my say-
ing so."

"Yes, oh ! yes, that's true ; I ran away," Judith said smil-
ing. "I was educated by two aunts, my father's sisters, and
we lived at Cheltenham and went to Barmouth every Au-
gust for exactly four weeks. It was at Barmouth that I
met Helen."

"Don't your aunts know where you are, now?" I asked.

She looked at me, rather wistfully, I thought. "Not
actually," she said. "They know I'm in London and all
right ; but they don't know my address. I'm so afraid . . .
I am sorry for them . . . but I couldn't go back. You don't
know how terrible it was to be shut in like that." She
paused a moment and then, ostensibly addressing Mrs.
Meares, she went on, "Do you think I ought to go back ?"

"Why, no! of course not," Mrs. Meares replied without
a moment's hesitation. "Why should you?"

"It must have hurt them dreadfully," Judith said. "Their
letters are so formal, but I can see that they are — dis-
tressed, very distressed."

"But they'd no right to bottle you up like that, now,
had they, Miss Carrington?" asked Mrs. Meares.

"I don't know," Judith said. "They thought they were
right."

She looked so little like an insurgent. She had the ap-
pearance of being so calm and, as Mrs. Meares had put
it — steady. And the same thought must have been in that
little woman's mind at the same moment, for she avoided
the impossible ethical problem that had been set us, and
said,

"Well, if you ran away, Miss Carrington, I'm sure you
must have had some very good reason."

Judith shook her head. "I'm not sure," she said. "I was
excited and silly." And then she closed the conversation
by saying that she must go.

The Meares made the usual expostulations, but she slipped

200 HOUSE-MATES

out of the room with a little smile, while they were still
protesting.

"She'd get her own way with whoever it was," Meares
said solemnly.

I hoped that entertainment of the Meares might be re-
peated. I had spoken to Judith for the first time, and I
was not dissatisfied with our brief interchange of remarks
about Helen Binstead. I repeated to myself Judith's "But
you don't like her, do you ?" and found a significance in the
sentence that had probably never been intended. I de-
luded myself into thinking that her regret (I had distinctly
recognised regret in her voice) was due to the fact, so
unduly prominent in my own mind, that Miss Binstead
was an obstacle. It was impossible for me to realise, then,
that she could be an object of worship.

My depression was all the greater for that imagined en-
couragement when day after day went by and I had no
further sight of Judith, save the Hrief glimpses of her
that I snatched as she went down the front steps with
Helen Binstead. They had apparently given up going to
Hill's room on Sunday mornings (I endured Mrs. Har-
greave with growing impatience on two occasions), and
more ominous still, they refused Mrs. Meares's second invi-
tation to spend an evening in "good company."

"I don't know if you would care to come all the same,
Mr. Hornby," Mrs. Meares said to me. "Mr. Hill is com-
ing, and he's always amusing, isn't he?"

Of course I had to pretend with redundant assurances
that I should, in any case, be delighted to spend an evening
with her and her husband.

We had a very dull evening, but I should have been dull
anywhere at that time. Meares and Hill talked politics,
discussing the critical election that was to come in Janu-
ary. Meares was a staunch conservative and was not to
be convinced that a Liberal government under the leader-

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 201

ship of Campbell Bannerman had any chance of success.
I had never taken the least interest in politics, but I was
a conservative by force of habit, supported Meares, and
lost my temper with Hill for being so cock-sure that the
Liberals would come in with a thumping majority. I had
always been led to believe that a strong Radical govern-
ment meant the downfall of England.

Hill only laughed which annoyed me still more, and when
we left the room together he seemed to have forgotten our
disagreement.

"Meares said anything to you, yet, about his business?"
he asked as we were parting on the landing.

"No, he has never mentioned it. Why should he?" I
said.

Hill did not answer my questions directly. "He doesn't
seem to be doing very well with it," he remarked, hesitated,
as if he were going to make some further explanation, and
then nodded and went upstairs.

I remembered that little colloquy a few days later. I
came in from the street and found Meares in the hall with
his hat and overcoat on.

"Going out?" I remarked cheerfully, and left the front
door open.

"No, just come in," he said, and I wondered what he
had been doing in the hall for the last minute or two. I
had not seen him enter the house as I came up Keppel
Street, and "73" was about half-way down from Totten-
ham Court Road.

"Miserable weather," was his next opening. He showed
no sort of inclination to go on upstairs.

I agreed and waited; I could not shut my door in his
face, and at last, although I did not want him, I asked
him to come in and have tea.

He accepted gloomily, but after a time he cheered up
and began to talk about Australia. He was not an articu-
late creature, but he interested me up to a point, and I was
not, after all, particularly anxious to be alone with my
thoughts.

202 HOUSE-MATES

And then he gradually drifted away from his unilluminat-
ing disquisitions on Australian scenery and people into a
more technical and far more graphic account of the coun-
try's mineral resources. He had been a miner all his life,
he said, not only looking for gold, but also working for
copper and tin in New South Wales and Queensland.

"I'm an expert, you see," he explained. "I was offered
a job to go out and report on a property only a few days
ago."

In my innocence I thought that ought to have cheered
him up, and I asked him why he had not accepted it.

"I may, still," he said. "It's hard luck on me, but I ex-
pect it'll come to that."

I suppose I looked my perplexity for he threw his head
back with the nearest approach to excitement I ever saw
him exhibit, and said, "A man doesn't want to take on a
job of that sort, when he's got a property like I've got,
spoiling to be developed."

"Oh! yes, I'd forgotten," I said. "I remember, now,
Hill told me you had a mine of your own; but why . . ."
I knew even less of mining properties than I did of politics.

Meares scratched his beard and looked at me with just
a shade of amusement in his handsome brown eyes.

"It's not so easy for an Australian like me to raise
money over here, Mr. Hornby," he said. "You see, I
haven't got the gift of the gab, and I'm not used to the ways
of these City sharks." He paused, shook his head solemnly
and went on, "But it isn't only that, in this case. You see
where it is, is that my scheme don't interest 'em overmuch.
They're all on the gamble, the ones I've met, anyway. They
want to float a company and sell my rights to the share-
holders at a five hundred per cent profit, and I'm not on
for that kind of game."

"I'm afraid I'm very ignorant about things like this,"
I said. "Do explain it to me." I was really interested, now,
not so much in the man's business as in the man himself.

"Well, it's like this, Mr. Hornby," Meares explained.
"All I want is to raise ten thousand pounds to work this

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 203

mine. It's an opencast, alluvial deposit, you know— -and
there's none of those expenses of hydraulic or crushing ma-
chinery that run away with so much money in lode min-
ing. Well, I won't bother you with that, the point is that
these company promoting sharks aren't on to put out
money at a modest ten per cent, which is all I care to
guarantee out of my property. They want to form a
syndicate, buy the mine, and begin working, and then sell
to a company."

"And you won't do that?" I encouraged him.

"It wouldn't be straight dealing, Mr. Hornby, not in my
opinion," Meares said quietly. "I don't pretend that we
could show a decent profit on a capital of a couple hun-
dred thousand. I know that sort of thing's done every day ;
but it isn't my line."

"Couldn't you find a man to provide the money as an
investment?" I asked.

"They want finding, Mr. Hornby," Meares said, sadly.
"I haven't got the right kind of introductions for that job."

I wanted to help him. I was entirely convinced of his
sincerity. But I only knew one person in the world who
had ten thousand pounds to invest, and even if I had been
on speaking terms with my uncle, I should have hesitated
to approach him on such an errand, however sure I might
have been of Meares's good faith.

I was still puzzling over the problem, when some one
tapped at the door and Mrs. Meares looked in.

"Oh! so you're there, are you?" she said, playfully re-
proving her husband. "I thought I saw you coming up
the street, and when you didn't come up, I supposed I must
have been mistaken. And there have I been keepin' your tea
waiting for over an hour."

"I met Mr. Hornby in the hall," Meares explained.

"Oh ! dear, now I hope he hasn't been bothering you by
talking about his business, Mr. Hornby," Mrs. Meares ran
on, addressing me.

"I've been tremendously interested," I protested.

204 HOUSE-MATES

"Well, there's one thing he's never told you about it,
I'm sure," Mrs. Meares said.

Meares rose to his feet with a slightly impatient frown.
"Come now, Minnie," he expostulated.

"I thought not," she exclaimed triumphantly. "Well,
then, I'll tell you the truth about it, Mr. Hornby, and it's
this — he's just nothing more nor less than a child over his
old mine. He could sell his option to-morrow, if he liked;
but no, he wants to work it himself and nothing else'll please
him. Like a child with a toy, I tell him."

Meares was smiling apologetically.

"Oh ! come now, Minnie," he repeated.

She tossed her head with a pretence of despair as she
followed him out of the room.

I had quite a different feeling for the Meares after that
incident. I could appreciate his personal interest in the
mine, and I saw how that almost childish desire to own
a mine and run it himself had lain underneath his bitter-
ness against the "sharks/5 who only wanted to exploit the
property and cared nothing what became of it after they
had secured their profit. For him, the word "shark" had,
I think, far more meaning than we commonly attach to it.
His wife had told us the story of a horrible termination
to a boat accident just outside Sydney harbour, and to both
of them the shark was the personification of all that is
greedy, brutal, inhuman. It was very evident that Meares
had no intention of having his beloved mine bolted whole by
one of that species.

And I admired, also, her tenderness for what some women
in her position would have regarded as an almost criminal
weakness. She was not ready to sacrifice him for the
sake of a competence, and I liked her for that. She might
make a joke of his foible, but I was sure that they were
devoted to one another.

THE TWO AUSTRALIANS 205

VI

I gave Hill my impressions the next evening. He came
in about half-past nine, and I waylaid him in the hall, and
brought him into my room.

He listened attentively to all I had to say, and then asked,

"Did he invite you to put any money in his mine?"

"Lord no ! Never suggested it," I said. "You don't sup-
pose I've got ten thousand pounds to invest, do you?"

"No, I don't," Hill said; "but you might have five hun-
dred."

"Not even that," I admitted. "But if I had, what would
be the good of it?"

"I think Meares has some idea of making up a syndicate
of small investors," Hill said.

I pondered that for a moment, and then asked Hill if
he thought that I should not be well-advised to trust Meares
with, say, two hundred and fifty.

He looked, I fancied, rather uncomfortable. "How can
I say?" he asked.

"You seemed inclined to warn me the other night," I
reminded him.

"The point," Hill said, suddenly warming to the discus-
sion, "is whether this property of his is any good. He
believes it is, I don't doubt that, but he may be quite mis-
taken. . . . I've promised him a little, myself, but . . .
well, I'm quite prepared never to see it again. And I ad-
vise you to go in in the same spirit, if you do go in. There's
something about them makes me doubtful." He paused and
looked at me with a frown. "You believe in them?" he
asked.

"I like them," I returned.

"So do I," Hill said.

I meant to have told him, then, about Mrs. Meares's con-
fusion after using the word "hinterland," but something
put it out of my head at the moment, and I did not think
of it again until the mystery had been explained by an

206 HOUSE-MATES

agency that we certainly had never anticipated. Indeed,
I temporarily forgot the Meares's existence when that period
of six weeks, I indicated, was so wonderfully ended the
next day.

X

JUDITH

I HAVE never pretended that I was a bold lover. I do
not, as a matter of fact, admire that type as I have
observed it in my own experience. In fiction your bold
lover is an unconvincing survival of such romantics as
young Lochinvar ; but in life I have only found him among
the men with marked polygamistic tendencies — and I am a
monogamist by instinct.

I can smile at myself, now, for boasting that I eventually
met Judith half-way, but at the time I had to make a great
effort to do a thing which seems ridiculously easy when
I come to put it down.

I saw Judith and Miss Binstead go out together about
eleven o'clock, on the morning after my talk with Meares.
They turned to the right, as they nearly always did, now,
and I only just caught sight of Judith's profile as she went
down the steps.

I was a little more discouraged than usual by their care-
ful avoidance of me, and I had great difficulty, afterwards,
in concentrating my attention on the competition drawing
I was engaged upon. Everything, even my chances of
winning that competition, appeared so absolutely hopeless.

And then a little before twelve Judith came back alone;
and she came past my window. I was staring moodily out
at the dull, grey street, but when I saw her it was as if a
curtain had been lifted. The aspect of everything was
changed. The familiar houses opposite, the lamp-post that

207!

208 HOUSE-MATES

came into my view on the left, the dark, greasy surface
of the asphalt roadway, fell suddenly into a pleasing
composition ; were sharpened up into an effective and beau-
tiful background for the central figure of my picture.

And she looked up at me as she passed, not with a smile,
but with a steady, rather anxious glance that held, I thought,
a hint of pleading.

I felt that her expression was an invitation, and yet I
hesitated to respond. Every detail of my first miserable
mistake came up before me, recent and vivid as a bitter
dream. And if I met her in the hall, now, would she not
find new cause to despise me? This might be a trap de-
liberately set by my enemy, Helen Binstead. I could imagine
her dull, threatening voice saying, "He's only waiting for a
chance to find you alone. Try it, dear. Give him the least
encouragement and see if he won't insult you again."

I heard the click of the latch-key in the front door, but
it was my thought of Helen Binstead rather than the des-
perate clutching at a late opportunity that sent me across
the room, with my pencil still in my hand. I was deter-
mined to lay the ghost of that old suspicion once and for
all; to vindicate myself against the sinister suggestions of
my enemy.

Even then I hesitated with my hand on the door, and
when I opened it, my despairing courage had evaporated
and I stood there, shamefaced and timid.

Judith was standing by the hall table, and I was in-
stantly conscious of her again as the central figure of a
picture. For the first time the fading haze of the blue
that fell on the yellow varnished paper near the fan-light
appeared to me as being quite a beautiful effect.

She looked at me bravely and yet, as it were, a little
breathlessly.

"May I come in for a minute?" she asked; and the con-
ventional disguise that I hastily assumed in moments of
timidity instantly smothered me.

"Oh ! yes, please do !" I said.

She came in and stood by the table, with her back to

JUDITH 209

the door that I had, almost ostentatiously, left open. And
now I further underlined my apology for that one gross
boldness of mine by standing on the hearthrug, so that the
table was between us and the way of escape clear behind
her. If this were, indeed, a trap of Miss Binstead's, she
should get no satisfaction out of it.

I could think of nothing to say. Her request to come
into my room had startled me, and put our interview on
some kind of formal footing. I was desperately consider-
ing topics for conversation, but all the polite openings
seemed foolishly out of place. The weather, the theatre,
Hill, the Meares, the approach of Christmas were all so
terrifyingly vacuous.

And Judith was looking down at her hands resting on
the tablecloth, as if she, too, were quite unable to venture
on orthodox politeness.

I was on the verge of asking her if she were going away
for Christmas when she spoke. She did not look up, and
her voice was so low that I hardly heard her.

"I wanted to explain," she said.

I must have realised, then, that this was the opening
for which I had been waiting, and that if I were ever to
escape from the awful conventional reserve which hid me
from her, I must seize my opportunity.

"There's nothing for you to explain/' I said.

She looked up with a faint smile as if I had suddenly
relieved her embarrassment.

"Oh! that!" she said, with a touch of contempt

"Yes, but it was just that," I protested.

"Was it?" she asked.

"Well, what else could it have been?"

She shook her head and looked down again.

"I mean that that was what put Miss Binstead so much
against me, in the first place," I went on. "I can't blame
her, in a way. But if you knew how I ... I've kicked
myself since . . ,"

"Of course, I know," she said. "I knew at once."

210 HOUSE-MATES

"Perhaps you did," I said. "But she has used it against
me. I'm sure she has."

"Only quite at first," Judith said.

"But why? . . . Lately?" I asked. "Well, you never
come down to Hill's room on Sunday mornings, now, for
one thing."
" "That was what I wanted to explain," she said.

It seemed as if we had shared an understanding for
months and were at last able to meet and explain ourselves.
After that first terrible hesitation we had leaped instantly
into an immense confidence. We were talking with the
easy elisions that indicate a tried intimacy. We had amaz-
ingly and instantly assumed that we had wanted to meet
and had been kept apart.

"I wish you could," I said.

"Only it's so difficult — here," she almost whispered, and
glanced quickly at my open door.

"Perhaps if we went for a walk," I suggested.

She seemed to weigh that proposition very doubtfully
before she answered, and I waited, already thrilled by the
sheer delight of anticipation.

"Where could we go ?" she asked at last.

"Hampstead! The Heath, you know!" I replied.

"Oh! yes," she agreed eagerly. "I have never been to
Hampstead Heath."

ii

We took the yellow buss from Tottenham Court Road
to Pond Street, and I believe that during the slow ride our
conversation dealt exclusively with means of transport.
This was the route with which I was most familiar, and
I found matter for all kinds of chatter concerning it. The
various destinations of these outwardly similar mustard
coloured busses figured quite entertainingly as a beginning.
I hinted at the mysterious qualities of such unexplored
places as "The Brecknock" and "Gospel Oak." I became
informative about the means of distinguishing one "Cam-

JUDITH

den Town" bus from another and pointed out the plates
with initials in the little forward windows below the
driver's seat. "H & V" was ours. "There's one coming,
now," I explained, "Hampstead and Victoria, and that one,
'K T & V,' is Kentish Town and Victoria. They all go
to Victoria, except one, that's 'A T & P,' Adelaide Tavern
and Pimlico."

That topic went very well for a time, and then we dis-
cussed the future of the motor omnibus. I had actually
seen one, not running, it is true, but looking very impos-
ing laid up against the curb at Hyde Park Corner in a
backwater near the Triumphal Arch, waiting for something
to take it home. We were not optimistic about the future
of motor buses.

My third string, the new tube that was building from
Charing Cross to Golders Green — a place that needed ex-
plaining to Judith — completed the journey for us, and
after that I had to play cicerone as we explored the Heath. —
We went up the Esplanade by the ponds and then along
the cycle track over the bridge, cutting across at the back
of the untidy Vale of Health into the Spaniards Road.

And always we talked superficialities; postponing that
promised "explanation," as if it were something that we
were afraid to approach.

We sat down, finally, on that comparatively retired
bench under the firs, looking out over the fall in the ground
towards the Heath Extension and what was presently to
be the new Garden Suburb.

It was a dull, threatening day, muggy and still, and we
had the place to ourselves.

I had dropped my stream of chatter, and although a
very obvious silence fell upon us after we sat down, I
made no attempt to break it. I was content to sit there
for a time and then return with Judith to Keppel Street.
I had been forgiven ; I had, indeed, been granted a wonder-
ful mark of favour ; and all I desired at the moment was
to prove that I had no intention of encroaching upon the
privileges I had been offered. I had temporarily lost all

HOUSE-MATES

my jealousy of Helen Binstead. I believed that she was
no longer an obstacle.

Judith's first words brought me back to realities with
an unpleasant jerk.

"Of course, you don't understand Helen a bit," she re-
marked thoughtfully.

The reaction jolted me out of my pose of demure hu-
mility.

"Oh! bother Helen!" I said.

"Aren't you going to let me explain?" she asked, staring
out over the path-threaded maze of gorse and furze below
us. In any other place we should surely have found some
colour in the prospect, but here the whole landscape was
done in greys, like a very faintly warmed study in lamp-
black.

"Is it all about Miss Binstead?" I commented, rather
bitterly.

"Why do you dislike her so much?" Judith asked. "I
want to know."

"I suppose it's because she dislikes me so much," I said.
"She always has. Don't you remember how she went for
me that first Sunday up in Hill's room?"

"It's all so silly," Judith said gravely.

"I dare-say," was my moody response.

"And you can't give any other reason for disliking
her?"

"I'll give you a reason if you can explain her aversion
to me," I hazarded.

A just perceptible warmth crept into her face; it was
as if she faced and reflected the pink stain of sunset.

"Of course, she's just as silly," she said.

"But why?" I insisted. I saw that I could hold a splen-
did advantage by pressing that question.

She very slightly shrugged her shoulders and then be-
gan to take off her little brown kid gloves — a purely nervous
action that satisfied her craving for some meticulous occu-
pation. She scrupulously tweaked the fingers of the left
hand in turn until the glove slid away, then she laid it in

JUDITH 213

her lap and repeated the operation with the other hand.

"She's jealous of you," she said gravely, bending over
her intriguing operation. "It sounds ridiculous, I know ; but
then she and I aren't friends in quite the ordinary way.
It's something bigger than that. You see, she came into my
life like — oh ! like the sun coming out of a fog. You can't
guess what life with my aunts was like. All the restraints
. . . about the way one Sat and Looked and Walked!
And I felt it more at Barmouth than at home, because
there were other people there who were just jolly and
ordinary. In Cheltenham we only knew the people who
thought exactly as my aunts did about everything."

She had forgotten her gloves for a moment, and she
looked at me for the first time since we had sat down, as
she went on with a little perplexed frown,

"I suppose it's hardly possible for you to realise the
sort of life I led there ?"

"Oh! I can," I said, with conviction. "You see, my
father was in the Qiurch, and my mother was very pious
... in that particular way."

She shook her head. "But it must have been quite,
quite different for you," she returned. "You went to school
and to your office. You could get away, sometimes. I
couldn't — never for a moment."

Mrs. Meares's comment occurred to me. "And yet you
don't look like a rebel," I said.

She smiled. "What does a rebel look like?" she asked.

"Well, more impetuous," I suggested.

"But I'm a very serious rebel," she said, and her earnest
grey eyes were full of light and colour. "That's the worst
kind, isn't it?" she added, still smiling.

I had no idea. I was thinking that her face was so
absolutely "right." I cannot find another word. It is the
word that we always used in the office as the conclusive
mark of approval. When a thing was "right" it was
beyond criticism. And from the first moment I had seen
Judith, that was the only satisfying term I had found for
her.

214 HOUSE-MATES

I suppose she guessed something of what was in my
mind, for she looked away and returned to the business
of her gloves. I watched her hands with the same sense
of satisfaction that I had had in the contemplation of her
eyes. Her hands were "right," too; not very small, and
certainly not dimpled, but white and firm and steady.

"If I weren't a rebel, I shouldn't be here," she remarked
after a pause.

I misunderstood that. "But I'm not blaming you," I
began.

"I mean here, now, on this bench, this morning," she
interrupted me, and patted the bench as if to make her
ultimate meaning quite plain to my dull intelligence.

"Do you mean that you've rebelled against Miss Bin-
stead, too ?" I asked too eagerly.

"Oh! not like that," she said impatiently.

I frowned at the furze bushes like a snubbed school-
boy.

"Can't you understand how fond I am of Helen?" she
asked.

"No!" I said sulkily; and in my thought I framed all
my indictment of Miss Binstead's character and appear-
ance.

Judith sighed. "Then we might just as well go home,"
she said, and began to put on her gloves.

I gave way at once. My fear of losing her far out-
weighed my inclination to make a martyr of myself by
sulking.

"You said that you'd explain," I said, "and you haven't.
You might at all events give me the chance of understand-
ing."

"I can't explain that" she returned. "One isn't fond of
a person because they're — well, good-looking or clever — at
least sometimes one is, perhaps, but there are other reasons
. . . reasons you can't quite understand yourself."

I accepted the evasion with a passing wonder if it
were possible that Miss Binsfead looked "right" to Judith.
"What was it about then, your explanation ?" I asked.

JUDITH

215

"I want you and Helen to try being nice to each other,"
she said.

"Did she know that you were going to speak to me?"
I asked.

"Yes ! We had a sort of quarrel about it this morning,"
Judith said and came at last, I think, to the real essential
of her long deferred explanation. "You see," she went
on, "I'm not ... I don't want to exchange one sort of
slavery for another. I didn't run away for that. And I
can't allow even Helen to dictate to me about who I'm to
know." She paused and faced me suddenly as if she meant
to anticipate my too hopeful inference.

"It's not particularly because it's you," she said. "It
might be anybody."

"I quite understand that," I said solemnly. "But even
if I were willing to be 'nice' to Miss Binstead, would
she . . .?"

"She'll have to," Judith said, and gave me a satisfy-
ing glimpse of the different methods her diplomacy was
taking.

"Well, I'll certainly try," I agreed.

That compact seemed to terminate a period of confidence.
Behind all Judith's girlishness and the queer timidities that
were the result of her five years in Cheltenham, she showed,
even in those days, the strong, firm mould of her own
natural character. And that steadiness which I instinc-
tively worshipped in her now put and held me at the level
)f a friend. Her manner gave me clearly to understand
lat our acquaintance would, in future, go in the key of
ler acquaintance with Hill or Herz or Mrs. Meares. I
lad been peculiarly favoured in as much as she had made
:his deliberate approach in face of Helen's violent dis-
ipproval, but now that I had been given to understand
one drastic sentence that it was not because it was me,
that it might have been anybody, she could feel at ease
again.

We talked of the Heath for a minute or two and then the
rain that had been threatening so long materialised in a

216 HOUSE-MATES

misty drizzle and we made our way back by the White-
stone Pond into Heath Street and had lunch together at
the Express Dairy.

I looked up at Ken Lodge as we passed, but I saw no
one at the windows, and I did not say anything to Judith
of my association with the place.

After lunch we walked back despite the drizzle, down
Rosslyn Hill and Haverstock Hill to the corner of Adelaide
Road. Our journey ended as it had begun with a discus-
sion of London's communications. The hoarding at the
corner of Adelaide Road marked, a policeman told us, the
site of one of the borings for the new Tube Railway; and
as I had recently read an article in The Builder dealing
with the method of driving the tubes, I expounded the
theory to Judith. She appeared to listen with a highly
intelligent interest, but some corner of her mind must
have been engaged in debating her own problems, for as
we turned into Keppel Street, she stopped me in the middle
of a sentence and said without the least relevance:

"Will you ask us to come and have tea with you on
Friday? Helen and me and, perhaps, Mrs. Hargreave or
the Meares?"

"Better not Mrs. Hargreave or the Meares," I said. "If
there is to be any chance of a better understanding between
Miss Binstead and me, we are more likely to get to it
if we are alone."

"Perhaps you're right," she agreed, and then as we
reached the door of "73" she looked up at me with a
friendly smile and said, "You're very quick at taking
things in."

That was the only praise I had had from her, but I
found it very stimulating. Something in her voice and
smile had definitely approved me and I was as pleased as
a child that has been praised by its mother.

"I'll send a note up by the maid," I said as we parted
in the hall.

JUDITH 217

in

Helen Binstead surprised me considerably at that little
entertainment of mine. I had not realised that I had previ-
ously seen her always under the influence of a particular
mood ; and I had allowed nothing for her ability as an act-
ress. I had anticipated a gloomy, resentful attitude, a
grudging admission that she and I were temporarily com-
pelled by circumstances to tolerate one another's unpleasant
company; and I was quite unprepared for her greeting.

She came into the room with her head up, and a general
appearance of being willing to make amends, that com-
pletely deceived me.

"Judith has decided that you and -I are to be friends,
Mr. Hornby," she said, holding out her hand.

"I don't know why we shouldn't be," I replied and shook
hands with her willingly enough.

I was so relieved that I instantly forgot how much I
disliked her. I had foreseen so many difficulties, and had
wondered if I could bring myself to pretend friendliness
for her in the face of the snubbing I had thought was cer-
tainly in store for me. And now that I found her pre-
pared to meet me half-way, I rated myself as having been
suspicious and evil-minded.

"I'm sure it was all a mistake," she said.

I did not defend myself. "Quite a natural mistake on
your part," I returned.

I felt a sudden glow of liking for her; and found for
the first time that I might be able to understand her. Until
now a possible misconstruction of her every action had
leaped to my mind whenever I thought of her, and no
sympathy had been possible; but the curious feeling of
warmth that came with the relief of my reaction brought
me a consciousness of release. I was glad that I had been
wrong.

I have often thanked Heaven since then for my
genuousness on that occasion. I could never have as-

218 HOUSE-MATES

sumed that air of friendliness which now was the natural
expression of my feeling, and the only weapon that I could
have effectively used to defeat Helen's elaborate scheme
of defence for the precious thing she would not share with
me or with any one. Judith knew that I was honest in my
attempt at reciprocity, and it mattered nothing that Helen
still believed me a fraud. She was as prejudiced as I had
been, and she could find no excuse for me and no sign
of any virtue. Hate is always blind; often to its own
destruction.

But certainly she assumed an admirable air of letting
bygones be bygones. And if I noticed, now and again,
something a little theatrical, a little overdone in her protes-
tations, I attributed it to self-consciousness. She must, I
thought, be feeling, as I was, ashamed of her past sus-
picions.

Over the tea-table we found a tolerable subject in the
discussion of the theatre. I was a neophyte, and she had
a lot of information concerning the ways of stage life. I
listened with real interest, and Judith was content to re-
main in the background.

Her attitude, indeed, was the only thing that puzzled me.
I thought she would be delighted at the wonderful con-
ciliation she had effected, but she seemed, I fancied, anxious
and worried, and strangest of all, for her, a trifle restless.
And it was she who broke up the party much earlier than
I judged to be necessary.

IV

For three or four weeks after my tea-party, the little
community of 73 Keppel Street appeared to have achieved
a perfectly happy relation in its social intercourse. We
abandoned Hill's room as a Sunday morning meeting place,
and every one came downstairs to my more spacious and
convenient apartment. I remember that on one Sunday — a
week before Christmas — Christmas day fell on a Monday

JUDITH 219

that year — we had a full assembly of all the lodgers, with
the one exception of Miss Whiting.

She had not been excluded deliberately. Mrs. Hargreave
had once definitely invited her to join us, but the invitation
had been firmly refused. I believe, as a matter of fact,
that Miss Whiting was in funds that winter. She was
often away from the house for a week or more at a time,
and when she stayed there her conduct was irreproachable.
When she went out in the evening she was home soon
after eleven o'clock, and always alone. Mrs. Hargreave
explained the refusal to join our community on Sunday
mornings, by attributing it to a fear of our attitude.

"She can't trust you to treat her as a human being,"
Mrs. Hargreave said.

Perhaps she was right in drawing that inference, but
I think Miss Whiting had other reasons for declining
to meet us on terms of friendship.

I look back on that quiet period, now, with some regret
and a little wonder. I feel regret because it seems to me
that despite the innate tendencies which were presently
to destroy us, we really achieved a happy human relation
to each other. My wonder is due to the reflection that
I should have been able to find pleasure in such a rela-
tion at that time. Less than three months earlier I was a
solitary, proud of my isolation. I would not look out of
the window when Herz was passing because I feared the
beginnings of social intercourse with the other lodgers in
the house. Some very essential change must certainly have
been worked in me during that first month in Keppel Street.
Hill deserves some credit as the agent of the magician,
but Hill was only an agent.

He was away for Christmas, as were, also, Mrs. Har-
greave, Lippmann and Herz— the two latter went home to
Germany ; but the Meares, Helen, Judith and I had a festival
at Simpson's. The Meares chose the rendezvous; they in-
sisted on a real English Christmas dinner.

I had anticipated some offer of reconciliation from Ken
Lodge, but none came; and I decided that my uncle had

220 HOUSE-MATES

been hopelessly offended by my quarrel with the curly
Blake. I never expected Gladys to notice me again; she
would think I despised her, and contempt was a thing she
could not endure; but I had certainly looked forward to
some offer of reconciliation from my uncle.

And the complete disregard of my existence evidenced
by his omission of any Christmas greeting, was certainly a
factor in my decision to invest in the Meares enterprise.
I had been paid for Parkinson's job, but I had no other
decently remunerative work in sight — my casual contribu-
tions to the technical journals were not well paid and I
looked upon them more as an advertisement than as a
possible source of income. It is true that my competition
drawings were nearly finished, and that there was always
a Hope, but I counted very little on that. I knew, now
when it was too late, that I had taken a bad line with
my plan from the beginning. I had not been at my best
when I began those drawings. So, it chanced that the
first serious doubts as to my financial future coincided with
the temptation to plunge.

Meares was more cheerful about that time. By some
means or another he had obtained promises of various sums
that were now mounting up towards the desiderated £10,000
he had named as the lowest possible capital he required to
work his mine; but, at the same time, he admitted with a
hint of chagrin that he had been compelled to forsake his
original plan.

"You see, it's like this, Mr. Hornby," he said one evening
in my rooms about a week after Christmas, "you can't very
well ask a man to invest four or five hundred pounds at
ten per cent. It isn't worth his while."

"Then what's the idea now?" I asked.

"It amounts to forming a syndicate, Mr. Hornby," he
said very seriously. "I propose to start the mines and when
we're turning out the stuff, sell the original shares to a
bigger company with the condition that I remain in as
general manager on the spot."

"And the difference is?" I suggested.

JUDITH

"Well, either the members of the syndicate get their
money back in six months with a bonus of two hundred per
cent, or they can take up shares in the new company to
the extent of four times their original holding."

Perhaps he still saw some marks of perplexity on my
face for he dropped into the personal application that
finally settled me.

''Well, for instance, Mr. Hornby, you put five hundred
into this preliminary company," he went on, "you or any-
body, of course; and when we form the larger company
in six months' time, you have the option of selling your
interest for fifteen hundred cash or taking up two thousand
pound shares in the new company."

I had not five hundred pounds to spare, but I do not
remember wincing when I wrote out a cheque for half
that sum. Meares asked me to leave the actual payment
over until all his promises were obtained and he could
realise the full amount he wanted; but I preferred to
complete the transaction on the spot. He gave me an
elaborately formal receipt, and begged me not to regard
myself as finally committed.

"We've been like friends here, if I may say so," he said
with a touch of emotion, "and Fd like to treat this transac-
tion as between friends. What I mean to say is, Mr. Hornby,
if you change your mind any time between now and the
registration of the syndicate, don't hesitate to say so. This
money's ready for you any time you want it."

"Oh! that's all right, old chap," I said genially.

I believe I had a feeling that my two hundred and fifty
pounds might begin to increase from the moment it was
in Meares's hands, and I foresaw, already, that in six
months' time that increase might be urgently needed.

Without giving the transaction reasonable consideration,
I accepted Meares's optimistic mention of six months as a
definite time limit, and mentally reckoned my resources no
further than the middle of July. But meanwhile I thought
out material for two more technical articles, and entered
for the next competition I saw advertised. I received the

222 HOUSE-MATES

particulars before I had completed the set of drawings I
was then engaged upon.

I must confess that I find it very difficult to give any-
thing like a consecutive account of my life through that
critical month of January, 1906. The general election that
returned the Liberals to power with such a tremendous ma-
jority appears now to be the most incidental affair. And
yet it certainly effected me; even vitally.

I remember going down to the Embankment with Hill
to see the results go upon a big screen, erected, I think,
on or very near the offices of The Daily Mail; and I see
myself there as a very perplexed Wilfred Hornby, a little
dazed by his detachment from the emotion of the crowd.

But that election and the conversations I had with Hill
broke my automatic acceptance of the Conservative tradi-
tion, although I never became a Liberal. When I escaped
from my mechanical reservations concerning party govern-
ment, I came directly out into the freedom of one who
owes no allegiance to either side.

Yet at the time I did not realise that I was extending
my liberty.

But all the outside influences of that January were col-
oured by my relations with Judith.

VI

Our movement towards friendship was infinitely slow
during the weeks that immediately followed our talk by
the Spaniards. We were never alone together, and when
we met in the company of Helen, Judith always seemed
to me to be nervous and constrained. She used to watch
Helen with a look that I felt was in some way doubtful
and uneasy, and she treated me on many occasions with a
definite coldness that I was sure was a mere assumption;

JUDITH 223

adopted, perhaps, to modify Helen's marked air of com-
radeship.

And that, also, was a thing I could not understand. For
the Helen I saw, after our reconciliation at my tea-party,
was a new person altogether. She no longer scowled and
brooded when I was with her ; on the contrary, she singled
me out for special attention. During our Sunday gather-
ings she would ask me questions about the architecture of
London or about art in general; questions that appealed
to my authority as a specialist and gave me control of
the conversation. She flattered me, in fact, by "drawing me
out," as she might have phrased it, by the interest of her
attention to my opinion.

I accepted it all in good faith, and responded without
effort to her overtures. I believed that she was trying to
make amends for her former misjudgment of me, and I
did my best to convey that I, too, had been at fault. I
lost my mistrust of the quality of the relations between
her and Judith; and came to believe that Helen might be
made an ally.

I was not surprised when she came down alone to my
sitting-room for the first time one morning, a few days
after Christmas. I had been hoping to find some oppor-
tunity for a greater frankness than was possible in the
presence of any third person, and when she knocked at my
door and came in with the excuse of wanting to borrow
a book, I jumped to the conclusion that she, also, had felt
the necessity for an apology or, at least, an explanation.

Perhaps I was over-anxious to make a show of welcom-
ing her on that occasion, for she was evidently nervous,
selected a book hurriedly, thanked me with a queer, little
mincing smile, and retreated before I had time to begin any
sort of general conversation. I thought that she had,
perhaps, meant to make a full explanation of her old
animosity and that her courage had failed her when she
found herself alone with me.

But two or three days later she came down again to
exchange her book ; and this time she stayed longer. After

HOUSE-MATES

the new book had been chosen, she went over to my board
and began to ask me about my work. I had the block
plan of my new competition laid down, and as there were
several separate buildings to be arranged on a rather awk-
ward site, I had cut out the ground plans of my several
blocks in stiff paper to try the effects of their various rela-
tions to each other, and the frontage and the fall of the
ground.

"Oh! what are all those funny little things?" Helen
asked. "They look like little beetles."

I explained as well as I could, but she continually inter-
rupted me with irrelevant questions about such things as
the use of my set squares or spring-bow compasses; and
she had an unnatural way of looking at me with a sort
of archness that made me feel vaguely uncomfortable. It
was impossible to approach any serious understanding while
she looked at me like that. I attributed it all to nervous-
ness and wondered if her earlier manner might not have
been partly attributable to the same cause. If my own
feelings were any test, that explanation was certainly the
correct one. I found myself inexplicably uncomfortable
and ill at ease when I was alone with her.

And it was this very uneasiness that precipitated the
extraordinary situation which finally altered all our atti-
tudes and cleared away the uncertainties if not the jeal-
ousies that so complicated any intercourse between Helen
and myself. I was annoyed by my own ineptitude, and
when she came down for the third time I desperately at-
tempted to achieve some confidence of manner.

I realised some change in her appearance when she en-
tered the room, and saw almost at once that she had dressed
her hair in a new way. She had quite remarkable hair,
but she usually dressed it so badly, screwing and plaiting It
into a kind of tight helmet, that I had hardly noticed it
until then. Now I saw it must be very abundant, if a little
coarse in texture, and that there was much more colour
in it than I had supposed ; I found veins of deep red browns
here and there, almost the tone of old mahogany.

JUDITH

I essayed a lighter note, at once, by commenting on the
improvement.

"Why don't you always wear your hair like that?" I
asked. "You've never done it justice before."

She had come into the room then, and was leaning against
the end of the table, her hands gripping the edge. She
had a very passable figure, and she looked, I thought, al-
most handsome — only the dead slate-blue of her eyes and
the untidy coarseness of her eyebrows still repelled me.

She showed a passing shade of emotion when I praised
her. Something that might have been fear or disgust
came into her expression for a moment, and then she ap-
peared to rally herself and said, again with that detestable
suggestion of archness:

"How quick you are to notice things !"

"It makes such a tremendous difference in you," I said,
still struggling to achieve a light, easy touch.

"Does it?" she asked. "I'm glad you think it's an im-
provement."

I accepted that as a tribute to my supposed powers of
artistic perception.

"It seems such a pity," I said, "that women should not
be as beautiful as they can."

She looked down and a dark flush crept up under her
rather sallow skin.

"I suppose," she said, "that a woman wants to — to have
some object."

"Doesn't Miss Carrington prefer your hair done like
that?" I asked.

"Oh! yes," she said, "but— but, well, Judith's approval
isn't everything, is it?"

I thought it was, but I was still trying to propitiate Helen
in the vain hope of establishing some kind of sincerity
between us. (f

"What other approval do you want?" I asked,
applause of the multitude?"

She shook her head, stammered something I could not
hear, and then changed the conversation by saying,

226 HOUSE-MATES

"You do work very hard, don't you?"

"It's that competition I showed you a few days ago," I
said. "It means a lot of work."

"You sit up to all hours," she went on quickly, taking
no notice of my explanation. "There's always a light in here
when we come back from the theatre."

"I generally go to bed about twelve," I remarked.

"Do you work all the evening ?" was her next question.

"Sometimes," I said.

She was embarrassing me again ; looking at me with that
expression which in another woman I might have called
coquettish. But that interpretation never occurred to me
in connexion with Helen; I only thought that she was still
foolishly nervous. I wished she would return to her earlier
treatment of me; that, at least, would give me a chance
to speak frankly.

"Judith is going without me, this evening," she said and
looked down again.

"Oh!" was all the comment I found to make on that
statement.

"She's taking Mrs. Meares to the St. James'," she ex-
plained.

"Is she?" I said.

"So I shall be all alone," she went on.

I had no idea what she was trying to suggest, but I felt
that I must say something. "Oh! well, so shall I," I re-
turned with an affectation of gaiety. "Grinding away at
these infernal drawings, I suppose."

"It seems a pity . . ." she began and stopped abruptly.

"Nothing else to do," I said, pretending disgust.

That dark flush had come back to her cheeks and she
seemed to be struggling with some speech she could not
bring herself to utter.

"Oh! well," she broke out suddenly, "I'm interrupting
your work — now."

She went out quickly, without speaking again and with-
out taking the book she had presumably come to fetch.

JUDITH 227

VII

The house seemed to me unusually quiet and empty that
evening. Possibly a large proportion of its occupants
chanced to be out, and my feeling may have been justified.
But the true reason of my consciousness of a deserted
dwelling was the knowledge that Judith was away.

She had never been down to my rooms after dinner, and
I had only once met her elsewhere in the house during the
evening. But I loved to know that she was there, near
4o me. When I knew that she was away, I felt as if the
key of all life had suddenly dropped a third; as if the
motive had changed from a brave challenging march to the
weary steadiness of a persistent minor.

It was a little after ten when I heard a cautious step on
the long straight flight of stairs that led down to the hall.
I was reading with my back to the table, by the light of
a lamp I had brought from our house in the North End
Road. I preferred an oil lamp for reading, the gas at
"73" was ver7 unsteady. I thought at first that the step
must be that of Herz, who had a habit of going out to
post letters at midnight; and even when I heard my door
being quietly opened I still fancied that it might be the
little German come to borrow note-paper or stamps.

I looked round with a touch of impatience, but the lamp
was directly between me and the door, and all I could see
was the shining of some pale drapery just over my horizon
of the table's edge.

I jumped to my feet, already a trifle startled by that
apparition, to find Helen in a long white dressing-gown,
with her hair streaming over her shoulders and down to
her waist.

She shut the door definitely behind her and stared at me.

"I've come," she said.

Even then I did not guess. I asked her to come in and
sit down. I was finding excuses for her; telling myself
that she had undressed before she found that she had

228 HOUSE-MATES

nothing to read, and that she had hurried down to fetch
the book she had forgotten in the morning; and, further,
that her association with the stage must be allowed for
— this visit of hers was no doubt typical of the freedoms
that obtain in the theatrical profession. I could find plenty
of excuses for her visit in that attire, but I could not per-
suade the stiff formal mind of the old Wilfred Hornby who
still lived with me; and when she came and sat down
opposite to me in the other arm-chair, my prevailing desire
was to be rid of her as soon as possible.

"You've come for your book ?" I said, and tried, perhaps
with a grotesque distortion of my intention, to appear at
ease.

"Oh! yes, of course for my book," she echoed in a little
hurrying voice. "That will do, won't it?"

I had been standing by the table since she entered the
room, and I walked across to the bookcase. I knew that
I could show a more convincing appearance of ease if I
did not look at her.

"Let me see, what did you take last?" I asked, crouching
down over the bookcase.

"Oh! does it matter? Anything!" she said.

"Anything?" I returned. "Well, Gwilt's Encyclopaedia
of Architecture for instance ?"

"Anything that will do for an excuse," she said.

I must have been very near illumination, then, for a sud-
den rigour of cold nervousness overtook me, but I was
hunting explanations again and evaded the truth a few
moments longer.

I came back to my chair with the book still unfound.

"An excuse?" I repeated. "Wasn't it that you really
wanted?"

She shook her head and her mouth was set and her jaw
rigid as if she were clenching her teeth. Then she turned
her profile to me and stretched out her hands to the fire.

I had missed or misinterpreted a dozen clear indications,
and it may seem strange that I shotrfd have leapt instantly

JUDITH 229

to realisation at a sight that might so easily have borne
another construction.

But when I saw that the hands she had stretched out
were trembling, that her arms and her whole body were
trembling, that if she had not so rigidly locked her teeth
they would certainly have chattered — I knew beyond all
further shadow of doubt that she had come to offer her-,
self in order to save Judith.

I had reason enough for anger, but I felt none. 1 under-
stood, now, not only how she had played and pretended
with me, but, also, the flat insult of her estimate of my
character. She had believed that I was a creature to be
tempted by the prospect of any sensual emotion ; that I was
the indiscriminate woman-hunter she had judged me to be
at our first meeting. And yet, my only feeling for her was
one of great pity, of commiseration, of a desire to save her
from committing herself.

"Don't you think you had better go now?" I asked
clumsily.

Her trembling stopped at once and she looked round
at me with a quick suspicion in her dull eyes.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

I was hardly less nervous than she was and my excuse
was heavily inept.

"I'm rather tired to-night," I said. "I have been swat-
ting away at that bally competition until I can hardly keep
my eyes open. In fact, I believe I was actually asleep
when you came down . . ."

I should have gone blundering on, but she cut me short
by saying,

"Perhaps you don't understand?"

I saw, then, how desperate she was ; how she had stif-
fened herself, and allowed this one mad idea to dominate
her until its realisation seemed her only possible means of
relief.

I do not know what sudden emotion prompted the reply
that came to me, but I believe that no consideration could
have bettered it.

230 HOUSE-MATES

"I understand how prejudiced you are, how unjust you
are to me," I said, and I jumped out of my chair and began
to pace the length of the room. "You're blind," I went on,
"blind to everything but your jealousy. You're not fair,
you're not the least reasonable. Yes ! I have got a griev-
ance. I've tried to be fair to you, and you've shut your
eyes and clenched your teeth and determined with all your
might to hate me whatever happened. You're not the only
person who has a right to love Judith . . ."

"You've no right, anyway," she interrupted me.

"Why not?" I asked angrily. "Why not? Why
haven't I?"

"Every one knows the sort of man you are," she said.

She was standing up, now, facing me with a timid de-
fiance. I could see that she was afraid of the sound of
her own words, and yet she was braced to an immense
effort.

"That's absolutely rot!" I said boyishly.

She clutched the table and watched me with the desperate
courage of the trapped animal putting out its last great
effort.

"I know," she said. "I know about you and Miss Whit-
ing. You were in her room before that row began. You're
the sort of man who ought to be — exterminated."

I had begun to smile before she reached the end of
that accusation and I think my confidence unexpectedly
broke her. She gulped and put her hand to her throat as
she came to her weak ending; and before I had time to
make any reply she burst into violent hysterics.

I stood there like a fool, fairly beaten, now, afraid to
touch her, afraid to speak ; and she swayed and rocked and
cried noisily with great hiccoughing gasps that made me
feel physically sick. Something within me pitied her and
yearned to console and reassure her, but the physical inter-
posed between us. I felt unable to approach her. It was
as if my spirit lamented but my body refused any kind of
response. I tried to overcome and could not overcome
my awful repugnance for that dishevelled figure with its

JUDITH g31

horrible retching, maniacal cries, even though I knew that
her spirit, also, stood back, bewildered and grieved, from
the clumsy instrument of the flesh.

I stood stock still like a foolish automaton, and the strug-
gle within myself reeled backwards and forwards and found
no expression. . . .

But afte. an immeasurable period of time it seemed as
if the storm had swept through her. She dropped to her
knees and crossing her arms on the table, hid her face in
them. She was almost quiet, now, but ever and again a
great sob heaved and broke like a renewed gush of water
through an emptying conduit.

I had a sense of returning peace, even before she spoke.

"I was so ... so," she gasped without moving her head,
and then one of those great gulping sobs broke her sentence
and for a moment I hardly understood the whispered
"afraid" that followed like the little voice of a distant
priest down the remoteness of the abruptly silent nave.

"Afraid?" I said, and my voice sounded harsh and loud.
"Surely, you weren't afraid of Me?"

She looked up and then dragged herself to her feet. All
the emotion was drained out of her but something of her
original resolution still showed in her brooding eyes.

Her voice sounded flat and tired as she answered me.

"Yes, of you," she said. "If you're not that kind of
man, why did you insult us at the beginning?"

I sighed, considering the hopelessness of any reasonable
explanation.

"I didn't know," I said lamely.

She seemed to stare at that without understanding it, and
then she said, in the same dull voice,

"Suppose it had been Judith to-night instead of me ?"

I forgot my pity for her when she said that. There was
something infinitely revolting to me in her suggestion.

"Good Lord! What a beast you must be!" I said.
"Judith ! Can't you see that she is the most sacred and won-
derful person in the world? Is that all your pretended
love comes to ?" My impetuosity choked me.

HOUSE-MATES

"I only wanted to save her," she said with the first hint
of personal defence. "I don't care how much you despise
me. You can think anything you like about me." Her
voice trailed out into the dreariness of sheer apathy, and
she took a couple of limping steps towards the door. I was
sorry for her, again, but I could find no convincing expres-
sion of my sympathy. I thought that she was going at
last, but when she had reached the door she seemed to realise
the threat of her failure and turned round with, perhaps,
a final wondering hope that everything was not absolutely
lost.

"You're quite sure?" she asked simply.

"Oh! how can you be so silly?" I replied as gently as
I could.

"And, of course, you'll tell Judith all about it?" she con-
tinued.

"I certainly shall not," I said.

"Why not? You'd better!" she returned. "She'd hate
me for it, probably. She doesn't care for me, now, as mach
as she used to."

"I shan't say a word to anybody," I said.

"Not even to clear your own character?" she persisted,
returning to that stubborn suspicion of me, which she was
never able completely to conquer.

"That's merely silly," I said.

She sighed miserably as she went out. I heard her slow,
dejected footsteps tediously climbing the stairs.

VIII

All that scene ..between Helen and myself had a strange
air of unreality when I reflected on it next morning. I felt
as if I had witnessed it from a distance, as if I had played
no part in it myself. My thought of it had the same quality
as my thought of the moonlight walk with the little doctor
on the night of my father's death. On that occasion, also,
the physical presentation of myself had been cut adrift from

JUDITH 233

the emotional, and I had found no possibility of uniting
them.

I had been so reserved, so detached, so inarticulate. The
more I pondered my own part in the affair, the more clearly
I realised that I had been acting, and that the actress Helen
had been moved by genuine, spontaneous impulses. I had
admired her effort even when I had been most repelled;
but in the morning I found her attempted sacrifice per-
fectly heroic. She had dared so much, and her motive had
been so disinterested.

For, thinking over the whole thing that morning, I could
only come to the conclusion that she must have taken ac-
count of the possibility that if her mad plan succeeded, she
might lose Judith's friendship. She had certainly been
prepared to risk that issue. "You'd better tell Judith," she
had said; "she'll hate me for it, probably." And I could
only infer that she would have counted that loss as bearable,
if she could know, at the same time, that Judith had been
saved — from Me.

I began very seriously to doubt whether I were not some
kind of horror that ought, as Helen had said, to be ex-
terminated.

What would happen next, I had no idea, but I was cheered
by the certainty that some rearrangement must follow last
night's drama. My general feeling was that Helen, having
failed, would cease to stand between me and Judith,
imagined her dropping to a relative unimportance, and I
was sincerely sorry for her. I made foolish plans in which
Judith and I recompensed Helen for all the suffering she
had brought upon herself by her wrong-headed estimate
of me.

Two possibilities I never considered. The first was that
Judith would be told of what Helen had attempted; the
second was that Helen might misrepresent _ the facts,
trusted her honesty, with a really touching simplicity. . . .

Little Pferdminger popped in about twelve o'clock,
remembered afterwards that he had an unusual air of reso-
lution in his bearing, but I scarcely noticed it at the time.

234 HOUSE-MATES

had settled down in dead earnest to my work after the dis-
tractions of the early morning, and I turned upon him, pet-
tishly, with a curt, "Well, what is it?"

His left eye immediately intimated that it intended to
take no part in the interview, and then the little man, him-
self, also appeared willing to cancel the imperiousness of
his entrance.

"You are occupied?" he said.

"Yes," I replied.

"So !" he said. "It vill vait," and went without another
word.

I heard him go upstairs, wondered vaguely for a mo-
ment what he was up to, and then lost myself again in
my work. I meant to make no mistake about my plan
for this new competition.

I think it must have been nearly an hour later when
Hill came in.

I glanced at him over my shoulder, and waved my hand
towards the fireplace. "In one minute!" I said.

But he would not take that hint. He came over to my
board and put his hand on my arm. "Look here, Hornby,"
he said, "what the devil have you been up to ?"

I stared at him abstractedly, and saw in that instant the
ideal arrangement of my plan I had so wilfully missed
during the last two hours.

"Been up to ?" I repeated automatically and made a brief
note of my inspiration on the side of my drawing.

"If you don't mean to tell me, say so!" Hill went on
sternly. "Don't play the fool and pretend."

I came out of my preoccupation then and stared at him.

"I just wanted to get this thing right," I said. "What
is it you want to know?"

"I want to know if there's any truth in the confounded
row little Pferdminger has been making about you and
Helen," he demanded.

"What?" I said. I was completely staggered for the
moment. If Hill had suddenly smacked my face, I could
not have been more disconcerted.

JUDITH 235

Hill frowned. "I can't believe . . ." he began.

"Well, of course not," I said. "But tell me what he has
been saying, anyhow, and to whom?"

"To Helen and Judith in the first instance," Hill said.
•'He was foaming and bullying up there until Judith, ap-
parently, turned him out ; and then he came down to me full
of virtue and tremendously injured."

"And his story is?" I interposed.

"That Helen came to you here last night between ten and
eleven in her night-dress and with her hair down, stayed
with you an hour, and — well, he added some very distress-
ing details of his observations on your conduct. He could
not see anything, he admits, but he heard — unusual sounds ;
and his description of Helen's return to her own room
was graphic beyond the powers of his imagination."

"Oh! Hell!" was my only comment; I could think of
nothing else to say.

"You don't mean to say that it's true, Hornby," Hill said
with a note of something like grief in his voice.

"The facts are; not the interpretation," I said.

I am glad to remember that Hill believed me without
the necessity for any further protestation on my part.

"You will have to find an interpretation to stop Pferd-
minger's talk," was all he said.

"Which won't be so easy," I remarked.

I thought furiously for a few seconds and then I went
on : "Of course you know that Helen dislikes me."

Hill nodded. "She's jealous of you," he said. "I told you
that months ago."

"Well, all that matters," I continued, "is that she came
down last night to have it out with me. The night-dress
was a dressing-gown, as a matter of fact. She came, I
suppose, on the inspiration of the moment. And we had
the very devil of a row, which ended in hysterics on her
part. I'll admit that she made some very queer noises
about that time."

"I understand," Hill said, "but Pferdminger won't.'

"He must," I said and rang the bell furiously.

236 HOUSE-MATES

Pferdminger answered it, himself. He came in with
a pretence of bluster, but flying his usual signal of nervous-
ness.

"Shut the door!" I snapped at him. I realised at once
that I could do what I liked with him and I felt in a mood
to bully.

"You've come up here to apologise," I said and stared
fiercely at his attentive eye.

"Apologise? No!" he returned.

I gave him no opportunity to work up his indignation.

"You have come to apologise," I repeated; "or take the
consequences. You've been spreading a grossly impertinent
libel about me and Miss Binstead, and now you are going
to confess that you are a meddling, eavesdropping, little
liar. Do you understand?"

"I haf told no lies," he said. "I vill not be called a
liar."

"Hold your tongue !" I shouted at him. "If you dare to
contradict me again ..." I scowled at him, preferring
to leave the unspoken menace as a choice between physical
violence and the immediate loss of one or more tenants ;
both reprisals were obviously threatened. Then I dropped
my voice and went on : "You see, my little man, you don't
understand. You've put your own beastly construction on
Miss Binstead's visit to me last night. I dare say you're
only an ignorant fool and not malicious ; but you've got to
realise that you can't go on making that kind of mischief
with impunity. This isn't Germany, and Miss Binstead is
not the kind of woman you're accustomed to mix with."

I saw that he was puzzled as well as intimidated. I
think the sincerity of my indignation had shaken him. He
was rather a low little scoundrel, and I have little doubt
that he had hoped to blackmail a few shillings' increase
of rent out of us. He had probably calculated on finding
us ashamed and humble.

"But . . ." he stammered, overlooking my long string
of insults.

"But what?" I snapped.

JUDITH 237

"I did hear . . ." he began.

I made a sound expressive of disgust.

"You heard Miss Binstead crying," I said. "What of
it?"

"But vy does she come in her nightshirt?" he asked
moodily.

"She didn't," I said. "She was wearing a dressing-
gown."

"But . . ." he began again.

I cut him short. "Are you going to apologise ?" I asked
viciously.

He spread out his hands with a gesture of renunciation.

"Eef I make a mistake . . ." he began.

"You most certainly have made a mistake," I said.

"Veil, then, I apologise to it," he concluded.

"Then go and do it, at once," I said. "Go now, this in-
stant, and apologise to Miss Binstead."

I expected a further demur, but he made none. I opened
the door for him and watched him as he went upstairs
with a sort of righteous insouciance.

"Do you think he'll do it?" I asked Hill.

Hill was grinning. "Oh! he'll do it," he said. "But I
say, Hornby, I never guessed that you could be such a com-
mander of men."

"It's easy enough when you've got the bulge, and the
men are like Pferdminger," I said.

"I don't know," Hill returned. "You were so splendidly
absolute."

I knew what he meant and wondered why I was never
"absolute" except when I lost my temper. The last time
had been on the occasion of my interview with Blake.

"It's a rotten thing to have happened," I mumbled, re-
suming my usual manner.

Hill made no reply.

I had left the door open and a minute later we saw
Pferdminger returning from his mission. He stopped at the
threshold of my room and bowed.

238 HOUSE-MATES

"I haf apologise," he said. "I say no more at all to any
one. I am sorry to mistake the affair."

"That's good," I returned. "Shut the door after you."

"Can we trust him to hold his tongue?" I asked Hill,
after a little pause.

"Yes," he said confidently. "He has taken his line. He
has justified his respectability and now he admits his mis-
take. Even if he doesn't believe you, he'll stick to that.
I've no doubt he'll apologise to you every morning for a
week to come."

By all of which statements Hill proved himself to be a
true prophet. I had no more trouble with Pferdminger
beyond the nuisance of his repeated explanations.

IX

I thought that some communication with Judith or Helen
must follow the events of the morning; and I waited, ex-
pecting one or both of them either to come down or send
me a message.

I had a new sense of having been drawn into a close
relation with them, of being happily entangled in a new
and unavoidable relevancy with the deepest interests of
their existence. We three shared, now, I imagined, the
secret of Helen's desperate scheme to separate Judith and
me, a secret that would surely constitute a wonderful bond
between us. I pictured Helen's confession to Judith, and
Judith's response. She would .see, as I had seen, all the
fineness of the offered sacrifice, and we could find a new
source of sympathy in our common gentleness for Helen.
I never doubted Judith. I knew that we were friends, tem-
porarily separated by the force of circumstances. But I
looked forward, now, to a great release. Helen's opposi-
tion had been dissipated, she could no longer have any in-
fluence. She had gambled recklessly and lost, and now
she must throw up her hands.

Meanwhile I hardly knew how to control my impatience.

JUDITH 239

I could not concentrate my attention on my work. I en-
larged and established the note I had made of my new
plan for the competition, but I could not begin the me-
chanical work of re-drawing it. Every sound in the house
snatched my interest away from my board. I furiously de-
sired to begin at once the new relationships with Judith
that I imagined Helen's confession would involve.

And a little after three o'clock I heard footsteps on the
stairs that I instantly recognised — after all the false hopes
of the past two hours — as those for which I had waited.
I sat quite still, and my powers of hearing seemed to be
wonderfully intensified. And I heard Judith and Helen go
along the hall without hesitation, heard them go out and
close the front door gently behind them. They passed my
window, but they did not look up.

For a moment I felt impelled to rush after them, and
demand an explanation. I was filled with horrible fore-
bodings. All the radiance of my anticipations had been
changed to the deepest gloom of doubt. I was sure that
there had been some mistake; that some essential of my
last night's scene with Helen had been either concealed
or misrepresented.

Five minutes later I was cursing myself for my failure
to follow Judith. I cannot say why I did not obey that
immediate impulse. My thought followed her, but my body
had not responded. Perhaps, the perverse habit of re-
serve I had cultivated since my first blunder had grown
too strong for me.

And now I was faced with the most wearing of all trials,
a suspense that could not be terminated by my own effort.
At first I decided to wait, at my window, until Judith re-
turned, and then to waylay her boldly in the hall and ask
her to tell me all that had happened. But I had not the
continence to endure that waiting. I put on my hat and
went out, not with any foolish intention of trying to find
Judith in the wilderness of London, but to seek relief
in action.

I had no hesitation as to my choice of direction. I made

240 HOUSE-MATES

straight for the seat by the Spaniards. When I am alone,
I walk fairly fast at any time, but I fancy that I must
have raced on this occasion. I have a memory of seeing
surprise on the faces of some of the people I met ; and more
distinctly of a small urchin of two or three watching my
approach with a look of stupefied awe. He stood in the
middle of the pavement in High Street, Camden Town, and
stared up at me as he might have stared at the threat of
some rushing, unavoidable Juggernaut of a motor. I be-
lieve that I stepped over him. He was certainly prepared to
immolate himself.

It was nearly dark when I reached the Spaniards, and
the consecrated seat was occupied by two engrossed lovers.
I began to debate, then, the advisability of an instant re-
turn to Keppel Street, but while my mind occupied itself
feverishly with that problem, my legs had carried me on
into Highgate Lane, and I continued my walk, still at
top speed, down Highgate Village, down West Hill and
into Kentish Town.

I got back to Keppel Street soon after five, wet with
perspiration, but immensely determined. I went straight
up to the third floor. I had never been up there before,
and had no idea which was Judith's room, but I knocked
with authority at the first door I came to.

Mrs. Hargreave's voice answered me and I went in. She
was sitting at the table, in her fur coat, writing.

"Well?" she said, and without waiting for me to reply,
added : "You look warm enough."

The room felt stuffily cold. There was no fire, but a
gas jet without a globe was flaming on the wall by the
mantelpiece.

"I've been walking rather fast," I said, and was aston-
ished to find myself rather breathless. "Can you tell me
which is Miss Carrington's room?" I asked.

"She's out," Mrs. Hargreave returned coldly. "Can I
give her any message?"

"Are you sure?" I persisted. "I want to see her."

"She and Helen went out a couple of hours ago," Mrs.

JUDITH

Hargreave said. "I don't know where they were going."
I thanked her and backed out. Through the fury of
my impatience I was aware of the suspicion that Mrs.
Hargreave, also, had heard some imperfect or untrue re-
port of my interview with Helen.

Pferdminger had attended to my fire while I was out,
and the cheerful flicker of it made the room appear more
than usually comfortable and inviting. I thought of Mrs.
Hargreave and wondered how far she was affected by the
discomfort of her surroundings. Hill's room was little
more cheerful than hers, except for the companionship of
his books, and his fire was always, it seemed, on the verge
of extinction — my picture of it was of a sullen oozing of
yellow smoke through a profoundly mournful pile of slack.
But Hill professed to be quite unaffected by the condition
of his fire or his room.

I went over to my board and stared out of the window.
I would not light the gas, or my lamp, as they would im-
pair my sight of the street, and I meant to watch until
Judith and Helen returned. My walk had calmed me. I
felt that I could wait, now, with a measure of self-control.
The consciousness of tension had relaxed as I had entered
the comfort of my room.

I dare say that I had been standing there twenty minutes
or half an hour when I saw Helen coming back alone. She
was hurrying, and she looked up as she passed; I knew
that she meant to come in and see me. My first feeling
was one of bitter disappointment; but that was succeeded
by something like relief. I should know now, I supposed,
what had happened, and later I should surely see Judith.

I hurried to light the two gas jets by the window, but
left the blinds and curtains undrawn. If I were to see Helen
alone, again, I meant to have a chaperon. I would take
the street into my confidence.

Helen came in while I was still lighting the gas.

HOUSE-MATES

was panting and, after she had defiantly closed the door
behind her, she stood just inside the room with her hand
to her side.

"Well?" I said, echoing Mrs. Hargreave's reception of me
upstairs.

"You've won!" she said bitterly. "I want to know what
you're going to do. Judith will be here directly. I — I gave
her the slip."

"What did you tell her about last night?" I asked.
"Pferdminger, of course ... I suppose he came to you
and apologised?"

She sat down on the chair at the end of the table, put
her elbows on the cloth and propped her chin in her hands.
She looked very weary; even the stimulus of her dislike
for me seemed to have left her.

"You don't know," she said. I do not think she had
heard my questions. "And I don't see why I should tell
you. I don't want to tell you, but if I don't, Judith will.
It has been going on and on all day. Hopelessly. She
tried to believe me and she couldn't. She kept coming
back to it and asking things."

She bent her head and pushed her hair back from her
forehead with a clumsy movement that made her hat jump
with a grotesque effort of protest. The ineptitude of her
attitude and gesture made me more sorry for her, and yet
I could not help thinking that if she were on the stage, the
audience would inevitably have laughed at the bobbing of
that apparently resentful hat.

"Tried to believe what?" I put in gently.

"I don't know," she murmured, still disregarding me. "I
don't know what I could have done. Nothing, I suppose.
I suppose it was hopeless from the first. I loathe men- — all
men — it isn't only you — all men are exactly the same. I
wanted to save her, but she can't understand. She'll have
to learn for herself. Perhaps she'll come back to me after-
wards when she finds out." She stopped and looked at me
and the shadows round her eyes were ringed with stains
that showed purple through a grimy black.

JUDITH 24,3

"You can't believe anything good of me?" I asked feel-
ing that I had her attention at last.

"Oh ! good !" she sneered. "I suppose you're good ac-
cording to your lights ; a man's way of being good; I dare
say you've felt wonderfully good since you've been in love
with Judith. But what does it come to? Nothing. Of
course you want her— for a time. I was a silly fool to
think that you'd look at me when you hoped to get her.
I'm too plain. Your sort has no use for plain women."

She was not deliberately trying to annoy me, but that
repetition of the damnable suggestion she had made last
night roused me again. I could not bear that attempt to
coarsen my adoration of Judith. It was an insult to her
no less than to me.

"What's wrong with you?" I said. "Why do you look
at everything from one point of view ? You can't be quite
sane on that subject."

She stared at me in her dull, unseeing way and thrust
out her under lip in an ugly sneer. "I'm honest, that's all,"
she said.

"Rot!" I returned. "You're merely blind and stupid."

She gave a little hard laugh. "Merely ugly," she cor-
rected me. "That's my real vice."

I had lost all sympathy for her at that moment. I hated
that unreasoning repetition of her obsession. I felt that
no one could ever make her understand. She had her one
horrible measure of men and it seemed to me that it was
the measure of her own perverted mind. But what goaded
me to desperation was my inability, any one's inability,
to open that viciously locked chamber of her understanding.
I had been willing to make a thousand excuses for her,
to find fine qualities in her love for Judith ; but she would
not grant me the smallest concession. If I had been a
typical representative of the woman-hunter she had imag-
ined me, surely there would still have been something in me
worthy of respect.

I made a great effort of self-control as I said : "Well, I
don't know what you're waiting for. It's quite obvious that

244 HOUSE-MATES

you loathe the sight of me. Why stay in the same room
with me?"

"I'm waiting for Judith," she said, and then, with an
air of gaiety that was quite a despicable piece of acting,
she went on : "You see, I tried to make her believe that
you, that I was . . . successful . . . last night."

I went suddenly cold with horror when she said that.
"Good God!" I ejaculated. "You dared!"

She nodded furiously and I saw that she was afraid, too
afraid, to speak.

"Oh, good God!" I repeated in complete disgust, and
then : "t)h ! please go ! I — I feel as if I wanted to ...
to murder you !"

She stood up and came towards me. "Why don't you?"
she asked in a strained voice.

"You're not worth it," I said.

"You'd be afraid to do that," she taunted me, coming
nearer still.

Perhaps she hoped, judging me by the measure of her own
hate, that I might lay violent hands on her. But as she came
within my reach, all that was active in my loathing of her
evaporated. I despised her weakness. I could no more have
used violence to her than I could have physically ill-treated
little Pferdminger.

I fell back on my cliche of the night before. "Don't be
so silly," I said impatiently.

But she still tried to goad me. "I let her think I was
successful," she said and thrust her face quite close to mine.

"As if you could ever be successful in anything," I re-
plied brutally.

She ought to have thrown herself upon me for that insult;
but she had no blaze in her. She had patience and courage,
and an amazing persistence, but she was incapable of abso-
lute frenzy. I remember when I went with Judith to the
police-court a year or two later and tried to persuade Helen
to let us pay her fine that she refused with all her dull, old
obstinacy; and I have no doubt that she broke her windows
and went through the hunger-strike with the same heavy

JUDITH 245

resolution. She was not typical of the average woman rebel
of that time.

And, now, my taunt did not rouse her to fury. It hurt
her, I think, more than any other thing I could have said,
but she accepted it with a brooding fatalism, and cherished it
as another cause of hatred against me.

"Oh ! / know, / know," she said. "I care too much about
things to be successful."

I do not believe that that was true.

Nothing further would have happened between us if we
had been left alone; we had used up our exasperation for the
moment ; and as she cowered a little away under the sting of
my words, we heard the click of a latch-key in the front
door.

XI

I had a queer interval of uneasiness during the few sec-
onds that elapsed between the sound of Judith's latch-key
in the lock and her entry into the room. I was not sure
what Helen would do. I was overcome by a sudden fear
that she might make another attempt to inculpate me, that
she might, perhaps, cling to me and play the discarded mis-
tress. And I realised that if she did that, I should find it
exceedingly difficult to refute her charge. She would be
playing a part and I should be speaking the truth, but it
seemed to me that her acting would be far more convincing
than my innocence. Nothing of the kind happened; but I
am sure that the idea presented itself to Helen and that I
was in some way aware of her fugitive intention. I can
very well imagine how the impulse sprang powerfully into
her mind; it may have been inhibited because she, on her
part, became conscious that I had read her thought.

My dread had passed before Judith came in, but both
Helen and I were still braced and wary.

Judith halted at the door as if she were surprised and a
shade uneasy. I think the first effect of the antagonism
she saw may have suggested confederacy. Helen and I

246 HOUSE-MATES

were so tensely aware of each other. The rapport was shiv-
ered as Judith spoke, but it had lasted quite long enough
for her to have felt it.

"I want to know the truth," Judith said, looking doubt-
fully at Helen.

I could not respond to that demand. In the first place I
knew that I must wait to hear what Helen would have to
say; and in the second I realised that it would be impossi-
ble for me to give a true account of her pitiful attempt to
compromise me.

In the interval of silence that followed, Judith closed the
door and came up to the table. She stood there avoiding
my eyes and staring with a rather cold imperiousness at her
friend.

"Helen! aren't you going to answer me?" she said.

Helen shivered and made an odd sound in her throat,
that was intended, I think, for a laugh.

"Don't be so righteous, dear," she said nervously.

Judith seemed to soften a little. "Will you come up-
stairs ? ' she asked.

I had to intervene then. I saw that if she had this
opportunity, Helen would procrastinate a little longer, weep
again, no doubt, and throw herself on Judith's pity, leav-
ing me still to figure as the villain. I could not bear that.

"Oh! no," I protested, "that isn't fair. If I'm going to
be attacked, I must have a chance of defending myself."

Judith would not look at me, but she admitted my pro-
test by saying, "That's only fair, isn't it, Helen?"

"To him" Helen said savagely. "You'd be fair to him;
why can't you be fair to me?"

"I am being fair to you," Judith returned gently. "I'm
only asking you to speak the truth. That can't be so very
difficult."

"Yes, it is," Helen said. "It's impossible before him."

She was still maintaining her fiction by referring to me
as "him." I might be all that was detestable, but she im-
plied that I was no longer a stranger.

"Why?" I asked sharply.

/

"I suppose you think I've no self-respect left," she mur-
mured. And, indeed, the abandon of her attitude, the limp
relaxation of her shoulders, the sulky droop of her head,
suggested that her self-respect was at a very low ebb.

For a moment a feeling of indignant impatience nearly
mastered me. I wanted to shake the truth out of her; to
shake her until she should reveal the whole shame of her
present pose. For it was this present pose that angered
me. I was ready to respect her for what she had attempted ;
but this futile pretending was contemptible.

The sight of Judith checked the irritable reply that I was
about to make. I looked at her and knew that however
shaken the surface of her thought, she had never truly
doubted me.

"Judith!" I said. I had never before addressed her or
spoken of her by Christian name, I was as shy of it as a
young wife of the word "husband" ; and my very hesitation
gave my utterance the quality of an endearment. I had
caressed that name so often in my thought that I could not
speak it without tenderness.

She flushed faintly but she would not look at me. She
wanted above all, just then, to be fair to Helen, but her
desire was not whole-hearted enough to achieve the appear-
ance.

Helen turned her back on us with a disgust that was cer-
tainly not assumed.

"Ah!" she ejaculated on a note of contempt, and then
she dropped into the same chair in which she had sat trem-
bling last night, and shut out the sight of us with her hard
thin hands.

"I only want to be fair," Judith repeated uneasily, main-
taining her unspoken compact of outward aloofness from
me, although Helen was no longer watching us.

Helen made no reply and I could think of no appropriate
way to break a silence that seemed likely to hold us inter-
minably. The clatter of a heavy van passing up the street
was a welcome distraction, but as the sound of it slowly
merged into the murmur of the traffic in the Tottenham

248 HOUSE-MATES

Court Road, the stillness of the room was disquietingly in-
tensified.

Judith felt it no less than I did and her apprehension was
greater than mine inasmuch as she foresaw the outburst
that was coming.

"Helen!" she said imperatively, challenging the expected
storm.

Helen dropped her hands, but she looked at neither of us
as she said,

"Oh! what's the good? You'll never believe me"

"That's absurd," Judith replied coldly. "Haven't I always
believed you?"

"Until he came," Helen said. And the high light of my
two gas burners intensified the rusty shadows about her
eyes so that they loomed like empty hollows.

Judith hardened herself. I supposed she knew that Helen
had changed her tactics, that she had lost all hope, and
meant, now, to wound — bitterly if she were able.

"That's nonsense," Judith said.

"Is it?" Helen replied. "You've forgotten our first quar-
rel, of course — after he had insulted you on the door-
step? When you talked such a lot of nonsense about . . .
Freedom." She spat out the last word as if it offended her.

"It wasn't the first time I had talked about Freedom,"
Judith returned without heat. "And you encouraged it as
long as it meant agreeing with you."

"As long as it meant Freedom," Helen said. "There's a
difference between freedom and license!'

The colour was mounting steadily in Judith's cheeks until
at last it burned as if she were facing the glow of a clear
fire, but she did not raise her voice, nor give any other
sign of her hurt.

"I said what I'd always said," she replied. "It was only
when I really wanted independence that you turned round
on me. But surely we needn't go into all that again." And
the touch of weariness in her voice told me how long they
had argued without daring to touch the vital application
which Helen, at least, intended to avoid no longer.

JUDITH 24,9

"Oh ! no, we needn't," she said ; "not all that ! we can
speak out, now. At all events I can. We can stop pre-
tending about Freedom. All it means is that I've served
your purpose and now you want to be rid of me. We've
both made a mistake. I thought you were different to other
women, but you're not. You've got just the same kind of
silly romantic ideas about men that they all have. It's no
use our playing at being friends any more. . . ."

"I don't think it is," Judith put in quietly.

"I shocked you, I suppose," Helen returned with a spurt
of temper. "You think it was a horrible unfeminine thing
to do what I did last night. Well, I don't. It wasn't done
for my own gratification, you may be quite sure of that. I
did it to save you, and you weren't worth it. Even if I'd
succeeded, I daresay it wouldn't have made any difference to
you." She stopped abruptly, suddenly aware, perhaps, that
she had acknowledged her failure.

The flush had died from Judith's face and left it very
white and cold. The horrible suggestion of Helen's last
taunt had finally destroyed any chance of real forgiveness.

And there came to me a vivid recollection of the scene
with Rose Whiting a few months earlier. I saw in Helen,
now, the same abandonment, the same stripping off of a
conventional disguise that I had shrunk from on that night
when I first entered the life of the house. Helen, too, had
touched some absolute, but it was no longer so repulsive to
me. I saw her naked soul, and it seemed to me wounded
and bitter and prejudiced; but she had loved with all her
being, and only some mis judgment, some feeble narrowness
of interest, had marred the quality of her devotion.

"Oh ! why do you say these things ?" I asked on the im-
pulse of the moment.

She turned her head towards me with a quick movement
of surprise.

"Judith wanted to have the truth," she said.

"Of course you can't understand," Judith put in.

"Oh! I do; I do," Helen said, but all the spirit had gone
out of her. She stood up and hesitated as if she contem-

250 HOUSE-MATES

plated some final outburst that would leave her with the
show of victory; and then, with a long sigh, walked across
to the door and went out without another glance at either
of us. But the artificial exaggeration of her feebleness, her
clutch at the table as she passed, her gesture in seizing the
door-handle, disguised and spoiled the effect of her tragedy.

XII

"I hate the stage," Judith said. She had sat down by the
table, but she had not yet looked at me.

"Are you going to give it up?" I asked.

She nodded emphatically. "I've been thinking of going
back to Cheltenham," she said, as if she were laying the
plan before me for consideration.

"But could you bear that life again?" I asked.

"No, not the same life," she said definitely. "But it
wouldn't be the same. I should go back — on conditions.
They would have to give me my Freedom to a certain ex-
tent. I am independent of them, financially. I haven't got
very much, but it's enough to keep me."

I weighed that for a moment. I had formed a mental
picture of her two aunts, and I saw Judith in relation to
them, much as I see in imagination the completed build-
ings I design in two dimensions.

"Wouldn't it mean — constant friction?" I asked.

"They'd never alter their opinions, of course," she said.

"And you wouldn't alter yours?"

"I have altered them a good deal since I've been here."

"About them ? About your aunts ?"

"Yes. I'm sorry for them, now. I used to be always
criticising them ; hating them for being so narrow. I thought
all those Cheltenham people were just blind and stupid."

"Aren't they?" I asked.

She began a little nervous smoothing of the table-cloth
with her hands. "They're so convinced that they are right,"
she said, "and so was I and so is Helen and Mrs. Hargreave

JUDITH g51

and pretty nearly everybody. I don't see why I should
criticise them, my aunts I mean, and their friends, any more
than I should criticise Helen."

"But you do criticise her, now, don't you?" I suggested.

"Yes, I do," she agreed, "but I used not to. I thought
she was almost perfect. So don't you see, I feel a little lost,
now, and it seems as if I might just as well go back as try
to find some one else, and then, come to — to criticise them,
too."

I saw, then, the direction in which we were moving.

In all that conversation with Helen, the quality of Judith's
feeling for me had been almost explicit. I had grasped what
appeared to be the realisation of all that I had dared to
hope. In a way I had never doubted Judith since we had
made that journey to Hampstead. Moving in our tem-
porarily parallel paths, we were so aware of each other that
I was sure we must inevitably draw together. And when
none of Helen's definite implications was denied, I had re-
ceived what I took to be final, incontrovertible proof. We
had declared ourselves through an intermediary none the
less definitely because our admissions had all been tacit ; and
when we were left alone, I had felt as if our agreement
were ratified and needed only the seal.

Now, she had terrified me with a new fear ; the fear that
she had come to doubt herself. I plunged desperately.

"Do you mean me?" I asked.

"I suppose so," she said, almost whispering.

"Do you — do you criticise me, now ?" I said.

She did not answer that directly. "I've been so — shaken
by all this," she explained in the same low, confessional
voice. "I feel that I can't be sure of anything again. I
should so like ... in a way ... to be friends with every-
body ; and that doesn't seem possible. I'm afraid there must
be something wrong with me."

I checked myself on the verge of beginning an absurdly
rational argument, to prove that her fear was the result of
a passing emotion. I was slipping into the old duality,

252 HOUSE-MATES

standing aside and advising myself ; and I made an effort to
win my integrity.

"Judith !" I said, and the sound of my voice compelled her
at last to look at me, so that I saw those depths in her eyes
which she had tried so long to hide.

"It may be only another mistake," she said.

"You know it isn't," I answered with the confidence of
my single mind.

I took a step towards her, but she held up her hands.
"No, not yet," she protested. "I must wait. I must think.
I want to go back to Cheltenham for a time — to think."

"Are you afraid of losing your Freedom?" I asked.

"No, it isn't that," she said. "I know you wouldn't bully
me and — and tie me in, as my aunts did and as Helen tried
to do, too. You wouldn't, would you?"

The thought of bullying her or interfering with her free-
dom appeared so absurd to me that I could find no words
to ridicule the suggestion.

"Oh! I know you wouldn't," she went on, "because I'm
sure we — we think alike about so many things. About the
stage, for instance. I knew you hated that, always, and
now I hate it, too." She was a little breathless as if she
were hurrying eagerly on to make some important statement
before she was interrupted; and yet, when I waited at her
pause, she found nothing more to say.

"If you go back to Cheltenham," I began again after a
short interval of silence, "you would let me write to you?"

"Oh! yes," she said.

"And you would write to me?"

She nodded.

"And we ... there would be some kind of understand-
ing that if ..."

"I only want to be quite sure," she said. And then, as
if she had found her statement, she continued more quickly:
"This place has influenced me so. I feel as if I couldn't trust
myself here; as if all that has happened here couldn't be
quite true. It was such a change to me. Everything is so
different. I used to be uncomfortable, at first whenever I

JUDITH 253

went to Mr. Hill's room with Helen. And I want to look
back on it all — from Cheltenham before I ... you see, you
are so mixed up with it. The only time I've seen you away
from this house was when we went to Hampstead. . . ."

"And then?" I put in.

She stood up and held out her hands to me. "I do know,"
she said, "but you must let me go back to Cheltenham for a
time."

I drew her towards me and she offered but the gentlest re-
sistance.

I wanted to hold her there, on and on, for ever. Her kiss
had been such peace and gladness, the fulfilment of all my
knowledge that she and I had loved one another from the
beginning. But she recovered her consciousness of place
and time while I was still lost to all sense of anything but
her wonderful presence.

"All your curtains are open, and we are standing in the
full light of the window," she reminded me.

"I had forgotten that there were other people in the
world," I said.

XIII

She was to go to Cheltenham as soon as she had heard
from her aunts.

She was not sure whether they would want her to come
back to them.

Unhappily for me, they displayed no sign of hesitation.
Judith showed me their letter, and through the genteel pre-
cisions of their phraseology, I could read an expression of
relief that was not quite free from an undercurrent of
triumph.

XI
POOR OLD MEARES

AFTER Judith had gone, I settled down to begin life.
She had maintained her resolution, but for one mo-
ment, on Paddington Station, her intention was nearly
broken.

She had staked a claim to her seat in the train by the
usual depositing of impedimenta, and we had walked to the
far end of the platform, talking a little aimlessly as people do
in those circumstances ; when there is no time to begin and,
in our case, a steady realisation that all life is a beginning.

We had come to a silence as we stood at the extreme of
that slender peninsula which, ahead of us, now sloped
swiftly down into the dangerous currents of sweeping tan-
gled lines all leading out to the great west country that was
yet quite unknown to me.

"I should love to take you to Wales," Judith said sud-
denly, answering my thought, "not Barmouth, but all that
coast."

"I wonder why you are going alone ?" I said.

"I must," she replied at once, as if we were continuing
an old conversation; although I, at least, had never until
then questioned the inevitability of her going.

"Why are you going, really?" I asked. "Why shouldn't
we be married and go together ?"

And just for one moment her intuitive purpose was nearly
broken by my rationalism.

But I pressed my advantage too logically. "Is there any
sensible, valid reason why we shouldn't be married at once ?"

254

POOR OLD MEARES 255

I went on. "If you can give me one, I'll be satisfied, but for
the life of me / can't think of any."

"I dare say not. I don't know any reason," she said un-
derlining her last word, "but I must go, all the same."

"Isn't it only because you can't get rid of the idea that
you are going?" I protested.

"I want to go," she said, and that assertion would have
been final even if we had not been startled by what seemed
like a distant firing of rapid, consecutive shots.

"They're shutting the doors," Judith said with an air of
positive alarm. "Oh ! come ; we must run."

And I ran with her as if the catching of that train was
a matter of the last importance. . . .

I remember speculating that same afternoon on the sub-
ject of fate ; I did not figure Fate as the awful, threatening
figure of Greek tragedy but as the equally inscrutable influ-
ence that tweaks some unapprehended control at apparently
trivial moments, and alters the whole circumstance of our
lives. My instances were recalled from any examples I
could trace in my own history; and then I looked forward
with a recognisable shade of apprehension to the conse-
quences that might follow the failure of my parting attempt
to dissuade Judith from going to Cheltenham.

For I knew, then, vaguely that if I had held her, instead
of attempting to reason with her, she would have stayed in
London and married me. She would have done it despite
her instinctive wish to return to Cheltenham, and I can see
no reason to suppose that she would have regretted her de-
cision later. But, no! at that critical instant my controls
were tampered with. I cannot say why I took a bad line
instead of a good one ; the choice seems to have been purely
haphazard ; and yet Judith and I had to suffer six months'
separation because of that accident. We may have a meas-
ure of free-will, but I am sure that we are subject to the
queerest kind of interference. . . .

Judith had intended to stay with -her aunts for a month at
longest, but the fate that had determined her going, kept her
there for half a year.

256 HOUSE-MATES

II

And she had left me to face, although I had no appre-
hension of its coming, the darkest, most despairing period
of my life. It is true that I was subject, during the first
months of Judith's absence, to fits of doubt and gloom but
they were all attributable to my loss of her, and not to any
prescience of coming trouble.

Once or twice in February I seriously contemplated the
thought of a trip to Cheltenham, and denied myself solely
because I counted so surely on her return at the beginning
of March. Later there were reasons why such an excursion
was inadvisable. My feeling of desertion was not, I think,
quite normal. I only realised when I was left alone how per-
petually conscious I had been of Judith's presence in the
house. I wrote to her every day.

My misfortunes began in the first week of March, with
the announcement that the elder of Judith's two aunts had
had a paralytic stroke and that Judith herself would cer-
tainly have to stay in Cheltenham for some weeks longer.
I could not protest against that decision. We were in the
power of the great Autocrat; and although Judith's ser-
vices might be useless, she was bound to offer them. We
had to pay the tribute of our youth towards maintaining the
old.

On the same day that I received the depressing news con-
tained in Judith's letter, I learnt that I had not been placed
in the competition I had been working on all through the
autumn. I was neither surprised nor, in a sense, disap-
pointed; I had foreseen that probability and my study of
the winning plans reproduced in The Building News, a
few days later, finally convinced me that my own were
very inferior. Nevertheless, the knowledge that I had failed
did not tend to raise my spirits.

I had begun to realise, by then, that the prospects of my
professional career were not looking particularly bright,
and that unless I achieved some success either by winning

POOR OLD MEARES 257

a competition or getting work by private influence, I might
be reduced very soon to seeking a job in an office at a salary
which certainly would not exceed four pounds a week. I
loathed the thought of that return to slavery, of the eter-
nal, mechanical delineation of another man's designs; but
I loathed even more the prospect of returning to Ken Lodge
and attempting to conciliate my uncle. / Perhaps, I was a
little prejudiced; too proud of my independence and my
break with the respectable tradition of my youth; but my
chief reason for dreading any approach to my uncle was
the certainty I had that I should be rebuffed. I could only
picture my uncle as I had last seen him, an irrevocably
offended man.

It was somewhere about the middle of March, ten days or
so after I had known that there was no hope of seeing
Judith again for many weeks, that the next and most seri-
ous blow fell.

in

I was working at my window about four o'clock, getting
my next competition drawings into final shape, when I
saw Mrs. Meares come back. She had gone out with her
husband an hour or two earlier, and I had thought they
looked very bright and cheerful. They had looked up at
me and waved, and Mrs. Meares had called out something
to the effect that I worked too hard. Now, she was the
figure of despair. She was holding her handkerchief to
her face and her head drooped as if she could not endure
any one to see her.

I had that instant sense of calamity which is so unmis-
takable. I had no thought that it might affect me save
through my sympathies, but I felt a cold wave of appre-
hension creep through me like a physical fear,
quickly out in to the hall and opened the door for her. She
was fumbling blindly with her latch-key.

I think she deliberately pretended not to recognise me at
first, hoping, perhaps, that I should ask no questions and

258 HOUSE-MATES

let her go up and hide herself in her own room. But my
tact failed me.

"Has anything happened ?" I asked. "An accident. . . . ?"

"Can't tell you — now," and something that sounded like
"thought we were so safe," was all I could understand of
her reply, and the last word came with a tremendous gulp
and a fresh burst of tears. She ran up to their rooms on
the second floor, fairly whooping with misery.

I said nothing to any one that evening. She had made it
quite plain that she wanted to be left alone. But I will con-
fess that through my sympathy for her trouble, whatever it
might be, a distinctly apprehensive curiosity began to peer
more and more forbiddingly. If anything serious had hap-
pened to Meares, my £250 might be in jeopardy. And I
had reluctantly come to the conclusion a day or two be-
fore, that I must take advantage of his offer, and ask him
to return me a part, at least, of my over-rash investment.

I had to sleep with that curiosity still unsatisfied; and I
remember that I did not accept as a good omen the very
vivid dream I had that night of winning my competition.
Meares was connected with it in some vague way. I fancy
that he was, ridiculously, both the assessor and the build-
ing contractor.

I went up to Hill's room directly after breakfast, hoping
that he would be able to relieve my suspense, but he had
neither seen nor heard anything of either Meares or his
wife. I was not sure, then, whether or not Meares, himself,
had returned to Keppel Street; and I decided to make an
early call on him with the ostensible purpose of asking
whether he could conveniently return me any part of my
£250. Hill's manner had done nothing to relieve my
anxiety. He made no reference to his earlier doubt of the
Meares, but he looked distressed and uneasy. I wondered
if he, too, had put something in the Australian mine. I
had never mentioned my own plunge to him and said noth-
ing then; partly because I was ashamed of my own in-
genuousness, and partly because the admission would sound
like a direct charge against Meares.

POOR OLD ME ARES 259

I received no answer to my knock on the Meares's door,
and after a little hesitation I opened the door and looked
into the sitting-room. No one was there, but I heard Mrs.
Meares's voice calling out an enquiry from the bedroom.

"Is Mr. Meares in?" I asked, and then had to repeat my
question in a louder voice.

"Is that Mr. Hornby?" was the answer I received and
the bedroom door was opened about an inch to facilitate
our conversation.

"I've been lazy this morning," Mrs. Meares's voice con-
tinued, much in her ordinary tone. "Meares has gone to
see some friends. I'll tell him you want to see him when
he — comes in."

"Oh ! thanks very much. It isn't important," I said, and I
was going out when Mrs. Meares called after me to ask if
Hill was in.

"Yes, I've just seen him," I told her.

"I — I'd like to see him, too, before I go out," Mrs.
Meares replied. "Could you tell him?"

"Now; at once?" I asked. "Down here?"

"In five minutes," she said. . . .

"All right," Hill replied briefly when I gave him the
message.

"I'll see you afterwards," he added, as I still stood wait-
ing in the doorway.

"Yes, I should like to know," I said, and perhaps the
tone of my voice confirmed the suspicion he had already
formed.

"Have you got any money in his scheme ?" he asked.

"Oh ! a bit," I returned.

"I see," commented Hill, thoughtfully. "I suppose that s
why she'd prefer to see me."

I went downstairs prepared for the worst.
lost every feeling of sympathy for Meares by that time.
I concluded, very naturally, that he had absconded wit
all the money he had been able to collect, and had
his wife alone to face the music.

I heard two people coming downstairs about half an

260 HOUSE-MATES

later and then Hill came into my room, and I heard Mrs.
Meares go out by the front door.

Hill looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before he
spoke, and then he said :

"They've had the most infernally bad luck."

"They?" I remarked. "He hasn't done a bunk, then?"

"Meares !" Hill said. "Good Lord, no. Surely you didn't
think he was that kind of chap?" His tone rebuked me
for my suspicion.

"Well, no, I didn't," I admitted ; "but I thought it looked
a bit fishy this morning."

"Oh ! Lord, no," Hill repeated, without noticing my reply.
"Poor old Meares isn't that sort."

"What's the trouble then?" I asked.

"I. D. B'ing in Cape Town," Hill said.

I 'had not the remotest idea what he meant.

"Illicit Diamond Buying," he explained. "They've got a
law out there to stop any private traffic in diamonds. It
was passed to prevent stealing from the mines, of course.
You may search a Kaffir for a month without finding the
diamond he's got on him. I'm told they swallow them, and
manage to effect a recovery later. In effect, you see, any
unauthorised seller of diamonds is convicted of trying to
dispose of stolen goods — but there are people like Meares
who get let in with the very best intentions. When a per-
fectly decent fellow comes to you and offers you a dia-
mond at about half what's it's worth, you don't feel as if
you were committing any awful crime by buying it. It's
just a lark."

"Well, what can they do to him?" I asked.

"He'll be up at Bow Street this morning," Hill said. "I
gather it's a clear case, and in fact, I don't fancy he'll put
up any defence over here — waste of time and money."

"Over here?" I put in. "Then will they send him back
to South Africa?"

Hill nodded. "Yes, they'll try him over there," he
said.

"Is he absolutely broke?" I asked.

POOR OLD MEARES 261

"They're down to about thirty pounds, I believe," Hill
said; and he looked at me rather keenly as he went on.
"All this money he's been trying to raise has been promised,
you know ; none of it has been paid over."

I turned away to the window to hide the evidences of
my indecision. I could not make up my mind whether to
tell Hill about that two hundred and fifty pounds of mine.
I inferred that he had misunderstood my admission of be-
ing committed ; and it seemed fairly certain that my money
had already been spent.

But Hill's next question showed that he suspected the
cause of my earlier anxiety and my present embarrass-
ment.

"I say, Hornby, you haven't been lending them money,
have you?" he asked.

"In a way," I admitted.

"I fancied there was something," he remarked. "The
little Meares woman seemed to be hiding something all the
time."

"Oh! well," I said. "I suppose he'll get bail. I shall
probably see him this evening."

But I never saw either of the Meares again.

IV

I went to a theatre that evening ; I was sick of my own
company and wanted a little relaxation; and while I was
out Mrs. Meares came back to Keppel Street, paid all Pferd-
minger's claims without demur, and took away her own
and her husband's luggage in a cab.

I have often wondered since whether she would have
made a clean breast of everything to me, if I had been in ?
She could not possibly have known that I should not be
there, and I think she must have come prepared to throw
herself on my mercy; and then finding the way .clear, suc-
cumbed to the temptation of taking what seemed to her no
doubt the safer road of a silent disappearance.

262 HOUSE-MATES

The letter I received from her a month later, dated South-
ampton and posted at Las Palmas, left much unaccounted
for, but to my mind it completely absolved her.

"Dear Mr. Hornby," she wrote,

"I suppose you have got to think the worst of us so it is
no use me trying to explain what I can't expect you will
believe. All the same I want you to know that Meares
never used your money, and asked me to give it back to
you when I saw him before the trial at Bow Street. Well,
I did not, so you have got to blame me and not him. If I
had not taken that we should have stepped off the boat at
Cape Town without a penny in our pockets.

"Yours very truly,

"EVELINA MASON."

Mason was their right name, and perhaps her reference
to their alias in the body of the letter slipped in by acci-
dent

I was glad to have that letter and if she had given me any
address I should have written to her and wished them both
good luck.

I believe, and so does Hill, that Meares was an honest
man, according to his lights ; and as for his valiant, faithful,
little wife, no one, I think, would blame her for what she
did.

I am afraid that they failed to "make good" after he was
released — I learnt from Hill that he received a sentence of
twelve months imprisonment I feel sure that they would
have repaid me that £250, even after the lapse of years, if
they had even had any money to spare.

I told Judith nothing about my lost capital when I wrote
to her. We had never discussed my affairs — indeed, we
had never discussed anything, and yet our letters show

POOR OLD MEARES 263

how decisively we understood each other. My reserve in
this particular was due to the sense I had of my inability
to justify the Meares for keeping that confounded money
of mine; and when that was explained, I did not want to
reopen the subject. Judith was so distressed about them
both; so fervent in her condemnation of the "stupid laws"
that had made Meares an almost innocent victim. She
agreed with me that his offence must have been peculiarly
artless. And I decided to leave her loyalty undisturbed un-
til I could explain everything to her in conversation.

Judith's letters were a great consolation to me during
that spring and summer. They had that quality of "steadi-
ness" which I have so often referred to in speaking of her.
I did not tell her quite the worst of my news with regard
to my circumstances, but she knew enough to help me by
her expression of complete confidence in our future.

(I have kept all those letters of hers, but I cannot quote
from them here. They were not in the strictest sense love-
letters, but they convey a kind of intimacy which I shrink
from displaying. And I know that all I have written about
her is incomplete and unsatisfactory by reason of that hesi-
tation of mine whenever I come to attempt any description
of her real personality. I must admit that the thing does
not seem to me possible. The touches that might present
her, all seem to me to come too near some personal rela-
tion between us that is too sacred for this advertisement of
writing. Even though I were sure that nobody except
Judith and myself would ever see this account of us ; even
if I were to write for myself alone with the intention of
immediately destroying my manuscript; I could not com-
mit my knowledge of her to paper. The very act appears
to me as a breach of trust While I could confine my-
self to the objective account of our earlier relations, I was
nothing more than a reporter of objective impressions. We
have laughed together over my stiff, mechanical account of
our meetings, and of the more or less invented conversations
that I have put down; and on various occasions when I
would have destroyed my manuscript in a fit of impatience

264 HOUSE-MATES

with the hardness and unreality of my history, Judith has
insisted that I should tear up nothing until the book was
finished.

Indeed, this whole apology, which must seem a very in-
appropriate intrusion into my narrative, arose out of a dis-
pute as to the advisability of quoting from the letters she
wrote to me while she was at Cheltenham. She is all for
frankness and realism. "What does it matter?" she has
just said, "no one will know it's us." (How queer this
faithful reporting looks!) But some instinct of mine re-
volts and will not permit me to be guided by her judgment.
I suffer an actual physical nausea when I make the at-
tempt; a feeling very similar in kind to that I experienced
when I tried to re-design that destroyed Queen Anne gable
of Parkinson's. And that instinct is the final arbiter, not
because I concede it an artistic validity, but because I cannot
write, as it were, against the grain.

But this apology threatens to lead me into all kinds of
discursions, and I must cut it short. I began it to explain
why my picture of Judith bears as little likeness to the
Judith I know, as did my attempted sketches of her after
our first real meeting in Hill's room. Perhaps I have made
that clear? If I have, there is no more to be said, except,
possibly, to draw the inference, that I am not a literary ar-
tist. If I were I should, no doubt, be ready to sacrifice any
personal feeling of mine or Judith's in order to present a
truth. I am very thankful that no such sacrifices are re-
quired by the profession of architecture!)

XII
ROSE WHITING

I SUFFERED the most horrible experience of my life in
the May of that year, and yet it was an experience that
has no real bearing on the development of my story. Never-
theless, I cannot omit some account of that tragedy. In the
first place any one who remembers the incident would throw
a doubt on my general veracity if it were omitted; and in
the second place, although I am nothing more than a
spectator, the experience had its effect upon my manner
of thought; was an influence in determining the new rela-
tions with humanity that arose out of the intercourse with
my house-mates at 73, Keppel Street. There were three
new members of our community that spring; a doctor, his
wife and their little daughter of four and a half. They
had taken the two rooms left vacant by the Meares. The
room that had been occupied by Judith and Helen was still
empty. The doctor was a qualified man, but he was one of
those feckless, incompetent creatures who can never keep
an appointment. He held some position at a dispensary
while he was with us. His wife, who had been a nurse, was
a big, handsome, heavy-eyed woman who boasted that she
had had to work for her living before she married and had
no intention of making any further effort. She stayed in
bed most of the day, and allowed her little girl,— a pert,
rather pinched child,— to stray about the streets. Her one
explicit instruction was not to bother her mother. Mrs.
Hargreave, Hill and I used to entertain the child to the best

265

266 HOUSE-MATES

of our ability. After the first week she had the free run of
our rooms — if she had not had that privilege, her only re-
source on wet days would have been the shelter of an arch-
way. The name of this family was Bast. They were not
immediately concerned with the great tragedy, but Bast
was the second person to know of it.

And apart from that necessity to introduce our new
tenants, I cannot avoid this somewhat detailed mention of
them. Bast used to come down to my rooms on Sunday
morning, and had an admiration for Mrs. Hargreave that
she certainly did not reciprocate. He was clever in his
own way, but his controls were very ^feeble and he seemed
to lack absolutely any faculty for concentration. His wife
was anathema to Hill, and has the distinction of being the
only person for whom I have heard him express an active
dislike. And, finally, the child — ineptly christened Aurora
— which was transformed by Hill into Oracles, a name that
still sticks to her — has very definitely entered into Judith's
life and mine.

The Basts, however, had not broken through the circle
that ringed the one aloof member of our household. Bast,
I know, made overtures to Rose Whiting before he had
been in the house a week, and she snubbed him so bitterly
that he never forgave her. I can understand that. She
knew no doubt that he desired a privilege she had neither
the means nor the inclination to afford him.

ii

Her period of prosperity must have ended, I think, about
the middle of March. I am reasonably certain that some
man had been keeping her through the winter, and I be-
lieve that she was faithful to him. I am almost sure that
she brought no man into the house during that time, and
I had a curious sense of disappointment when I observed
the revival of the old traffic. I am not ashamed to admit
that although I had never spoken to her since that very

ROSE WHITING 267

brief colloquy of ours on the night of the row, I had a
distinct feeling of sympathy, even of liking, for her.

Hill shared that feeling, but I am not using the fact as a
defence for with the single exception of his dislike for
Mrs. Bast, his attitude towards all humanity was one of
singular gentleness. He and I discussed Rose Whiting's
problem before she had it so tragically solved for her, but
we could only arrive at the inevitable conclusion that there
was nothing to be done. Her independent spirit would not
have acknowledged the necessity for any reform of the
Puritan order, or have accepted support for which she
could offer no return. She may have preferred to remain a
pariah so far as "73" was concerned, but she certainly did
not regard herself as a "lost" woman.

I could be exceedingly accurate about the date of that
event which so disturbed our household for a time, but it
is sufficient to say that the thing happened one Saturday
night in May. I heard two people come in about midnight,
and guessed that it probably was Rose Whiting and a
"friend," and I heard the man go out again about an hour
later. I was just going to bed, then. I had been working
tremendously hard on my new competition which was quite
the most ambitious thing I had done, and I was keyed up,
overtired, and not in the least inclined to sleep. I looked
out of my window and saw the shoulders of the man as he
turned eastwards towards Russell Square, but the only fact
I could swear to, afterwards, was that he was wearing a
bowler hat.

I suppose the instant sense of horror that assailed me
when I saw that man, might be put down to coincidence,
certainly found it very difficult to explain, in the light of
my admission that the same kind of visitor had been seen
by me many times before. And there is undeniably the
suggestion of a chance concurrence of circumstances in
the fact that on this one night of all others I should have
been in that condition of nervous exhaustion which so
often gives us the power to transcend our physical limita-
tions. For in effect I did that. I shuddered when I had my

268 HOUSE-MATES

brief vision of those hunched shoulders turning quickly up
Keppel Street. I was afraid and full of a horrid appre-
hension. Possibly something of the man's own quick terror
may have been communicated to me. I was, no doubt, an
ideally receptive medium at the moment.

And I could not shake off the feeling when I had dropped
the blind and returned to the rational light and comfort of
my own room. I began the usual altercation with myself,
but my domineering intellectual side found no adequate
reply to the perpetual suggestion that I should go and see
if everything was all right. And the queer thing is that the
two sides of me shifted so absurdly that I finally went at
the command of my practical intelligence. I went at last to
demonstrate that my impulse was ridiculous.

I framed an apology as I reluctantly climbed the stairs.
When I knocked at the door, I was prepared with the ex-
cuse that I thought I had heard a cry for help. It was a
strange excuse to offer, but it did not seem unusual to me at
the time. Since then I have often wondered whether some
cry had not reached my subconsciousness while I was work-
ing. I know the illusion of having heard a cry took such
vivid shape in my mind that I had to pause before I an-
swered, a few hours later, the inspector's question on that
point. And yet, I had no real presentiment of disaster as
I went upstairs.

I can be definite about this last point because I know
the exact moment when all my apprehensions ceased to be
aspersed as hallucinations by one side of my mind, and took
the form of terrifying certainty.

That moment came when I knocked at Rose Whiting's
door and received no answer. * There were possible rea-
sons for her silence; she might have been asleep, or she
might not have heard my nervous little tapping if she had
been in the bedroom. But I knew then, suddenly and ter-
ribly, that something awful lay on the further side of that
door. There was a quality in the stillness tjiat was like
nothing I had ever known. It was the stillness of an im-
mense effort that could find no release in movement; an

ROSE WHITING 269

effort that Was silently clamouring for me to open the
door.

HI

An absurd impulse that was more nearly modesty than
anything, induced me to disguise the truth when I had at
last roused Bast.

He came into his sitting-room in pajamas, dishevelled,
sleepy, and looking more unreliable than ever.

"Some kind of fit?" he repeated, and then he looked at
me with a detestable leer and said, "I say, what have you
been up to?"

I scowled at him. I was weak with impatience and I was
not afraid that I might be implicated in a charge of mur-
der— that fear only gripped me once, very briefly, and was
dispersed without effort ; but I found that I could not pass
his imputations without an explicit denial.

"Oh ! good Lord, don't be an ass," I said. "It's nothing
of that sort. There was some man up there. I saw him
go out. I believe she's dead."

Bast whistled and looked more suspicious than ever.
"Hadn't we better leave it alone?" he asked. "Nasty
thing to be mixed up with."

I took hold of his arm. "Oh ! come on," I said fiercely.
I was suffering the awful feeling of helplessness that comes
in a dream; I felt as if it would take me years to con-
vince him.

And he still continued to parry and evade my urgency.
He wrenched his arm away. "I'll have to get some of my
tools," he excused himself.

"For God's sake, make haste, then," I said. I repeated
that "for God's sake" continually as we argued. I clung to
the phrase as the single form of articulateness that was
possible for me. An explanation was too long, but that
adjuration gave me a little relief. ^

"All this looks damned suspicious, you know, Hornby,

270 HOUSE-MATES

was Bast's last evasion. "How long had you been with
her?"

And then his wife's voice called complainingly from the
bedroom, and I suddenly gave up hope of getting Bast to
come down. I walked over to the door with a new inten-
tion quite clearly in my mind.

"Where are you going?" Bast asked.

"Police Station," I told him with a new sense of relief;
and then, with the bitterness of revenge rather than with
any further hope of inducing him to come down, I added :
"I suppose I may tell them that there was a qualified medi-
cal man in the house who refused to render assistance."

"Oh! I'm coming, man," Bast expostulated. "I only
wanted to know what the trouble was. You're so infernally
confused."

I looked back and saw that his wife in her nightdress was
standing at the door of communication between the two
rooms. She began some shrill interrogation, but I did not
want to hear her scolding. Neither did Bast. He caught
me up before I had reached the first floor landing. I believe
he came as much to escape from his wife as from fear of
my threat. He had not, after all, brought his instruments
with him.

IV

Rose Whiting was lying huddled by the sofa, a white-
skinned, stoutish woman up to her neck, and above that a
thing of sheer horror. I had not been nearer to her than
twelve feet or so, the width of the room, but I might have
touched her without noticing the wire that had bitten into
her throat, and was completely covered in front and at
the sides by the pinched flesh of her neck.

Bass seemed to guess the cause of death without hesita-
tion. He turned the body over, roughly, and then looked
up at me with an odd, expressive droop of his mouth and
pointed to the loose ends of the wire. They were twisted
two or three times and he unwound them without difficulty

ROSE WHITING 271

and drew the wire out of the wound. It had cut right
into the flesh in three places, but no blood was visible until
he released the constriction.

It gave me a curious comfort to see the insouciance
with which he handled the body. I had the layman's con-
fidence in the expert and was glad to be relieved of re-
sponsibility.

"What's to be done?" I asked.

"No use trying artificial respiration," he said, carelessly.
"She's been dead half-an-hour, at least. I suppose you'd
better go to the police station. I'll tell Pferdy. Can't do
any good here."

He appeared to have forgotten his suspicion of me.

I was glad to get out into the night, but I think I came
very near to fainting as I went down Keppel Street.

I meant to go straight to the Police Station in Totten-
ham Court Road, but I met a constable before I reached
it and stopped at once.

"There's been a murder at 73," I announced breath-
lessly.

He thought I was drunk and flashed his bull's-eye in my
face.

"Seventy-three what?" he asked gruffly.

"Seventy-three Keppel Street," I said. "I was on my
way to the police station."

"What have you got to do with it?" he asked.

"I live in the same house," I explained. I had lost my
feeling of impatience, now, and at the least excuse I should
have become garrulous. All the uncertainty was over, and,
to me, much of the horror since Bast had made his ex-
amination. "There's a doctor with the body," I went on,
"but I discovered it. The doctor's name is Bast. I fetched
him down."

"Look here, you'd better be careful," the man warned
me. "Don't you say too much till you see the inspector.
I'll come that far," he concluded, indicating the lamp of
the station, fifty yards down on the opposite side of the
road.

HOUSE-MATES

Neither he nor the sergeant-in-charge at the police sta-
tion displayed from first to last the least sign of perturba-
tion. I inferred from their manner that they were cau-
tiously aware of the possibility that I might be playing
some grotesque practical joke upon them. They ques-
tioned me gruffly, and as if I were giving them most un-
necessary trouble.

Nothing was quite real to me that night. All my im-
pressions were hard and thin, and had a peculiar bright-
ness which when I look back on the whole experience pre-
sents it in terms of visibility rather than of sensation.
After Bast's examination of the body, all my emotion seems
to have been spent. I had a feeling of being immensely
separated from the doings and sayings of the little fig-
ures who continually reached out to me with their distant
questions and commands.

I suppose it must have been somewhere about two o'clock
when I returned with an inspector and two constables to
"73" ; but there was a little knot of people, a dozen, I dare
say, clustered inquisitively about the door. One of them
caught me by the sleeve as I passed him. "What's up?" he
asked in an eager, excited voice. I took no kind of notice
of him.

We heard Pferdminger's voice long before we opened
the door. One of my blinds had been pulled up, the win-
dow was open and my room still blazed with light. It
struck me that the sight of my room thus displayed was
like a hole torn in the decent curtain of the street, and
that it exposed the secret organs of life. That revealed
interior gave me an impression of depth, as if it were
the beginning of an interminable vista that penetrated into
the mechanical heart of existence.

Little Pferdminger was leaning against the table in the
hall when we entered. He was extraordinary excited and
voluble; and for some inexplicable reason he was wearing

ROSE WHITING 273

a soft felt hat. Bast, with a shabby dressing-gown over
his pyjamas, was sitting on the stairs, listening to him with
a grim, critical smile.

Pferdminger made a sort of rush at us as we entered,
but the inspector stopped his flow of quite unintelligible ex-
planations with a curt "Which floor?" and then gave me
my first feeling of respect for his esoteric knowledge by
saying, "Rose Whiting, isn't it ?" I am sure that I had not
mentioned her name. All the questions that had been
put to me until then had been as to my own identity. The
police might, I thought, have been expecting this murder,
and now it had come their one real concern was to throw
doubt on the integrity of the witnesses.

I stayed in my own room while the inspector and one
of his subordinates (the other had been left outside on
the doorstep) went upstairs. In my detached way I was
aware of a considerable clamour beating upon the rigid
walls that shut in my retired personality. I heard the
heavy tread of the men upstairs, the dull murmur of the
increasing crowd that mumbled mysteriously in the roadway ;
and of a clear-cut, monotonous voice that was apparently
delivering a lecture somewhere away in the hidden depths
of the house. But all this siege of activity failed to perturb
me. I knew that it could not break through the fine de-
fences that stood between me and feeling. My mind was
working swiftly and accurately, like a precise little mecha-
nism of some delicate vivid metal.

It responded at once when the voice that had been thrill-
ing so steadily upstairs came in to my room and dropped
a -full fifth to ask me a question. I saw, with a sense of
pride in my faculty for seeing, that Mrs. Hargreave was
standing in the doorway, dressed mainly in her eternal fur
coat ; and behind her hovered a little crowd, Herz frightened
and grey; Lippmann rather portentous and looking grossly
fat in an elaborate dressing-gown; and the dull, resigned
figure of Mrs. Pferdminger, the only one of us, I think,
beside myself, who was fully dressed. Little Oracles in a

274 HOUSE-MATES

plaid shawl was clinging, pert and inquisitive, to the fur
of Mrs. Hargreave's coat.

"Who did it, Mr. Hornby?" was the question that Mrs.
Hargreave had put to me.

"A man in a bowler hat," I said.

"Then you saw him?" she continued.

"Only that much. I saw him go out," I told her.

She appeared to be taking the inquiry in hand on behalf
of her select followers, but she was interrupted by the re-
turn of the inspector who had now dropped the second of his
supernumeraries upstairs.

"What's all this?" he began, by way of a polite opening,
and proceeded to takes the names, including Oracles', of
every one present. Mrs. Hargreave wanted to argue with
him, but he ignored her. He had little Pferdminger in
tow, and referred to him every now and again for veri-
fication.

"Is this all the people in the house?" he asked him when
he had written down the names of the group in the hall.

"Vith zose you already haf, yes," Pferdminger replied
sullenly.

"Better get out of the way, then," the inspector said,
and with a gesture he warned them all, including Pferd-
minger, out of the room and shut the door on them.

I dare say that he was very conscious of his importance
just then. His manner was very different from that of
the policemen who had come in on the night when poor
Rose Whiting defied the whole world of convention.

"I shall be coming with another officer to-morrow morn-
ing to take your deposition," he said, looking at me. "Un-
til then I should advise you to answer no questions, and
generally, well, keep your mouth shut."

I nodded.

"This is a very serious business," he added.

"Very," I said.

"I must ask you not to leave the house until I have
seen you in the morning," he went on sternly.

"All right," I agreed.

ROSE WHITING 275

And then he suddenly dropped his official manner and
stroking his fine moustache, said, "You're a bit shook up,
of course; but we get used to this kind of thing. I was
engaged in that very similar case in Bernard Street. Same
feller done 'em both, if you ask me. Well, good-night, sir."

I should have offered him a drink if he had stayed an-
other minute.

VI

I went to bed as soon as he had gone. I took a book
with me as I was quite convinced that never in my life
had I felt less sleepy. But as soon as I lay down I col-
lapsed almost instantly into unconsciousness. Perhaps I
fainted and the faint developed into natural sleep. I re-
member that in the moment that intervened between my
realisation of complete prostration and the blackness of
coma, I made an effort to blow out the candle and was
unable to make the least movement. And that uncompleted
impulse was still active when Pferdminger determined^'
woke me at eleven o'clock the next morning. I raised
myself — at once, as I thought — and turned to the table by
my bed. The beginning of realisation came to me when
I saw that the candlestick was empty. Not until then did
I become aware of Pferdminger.

"Ze police are in vaiting for you, in zere," he said peev-
ishly, pointing to my sitting-room. "Zis is now ze sird
time you vill not vake yourself."

"What's the time?" I asked. I still found it hard to
believe that I had been asleep.

"More than eleven o'clock," he replied impatiently. "I
vant to know vat you say to ze police."

I got out of bed, and my mind working back through
recent events picked up a memory of the injunction that
had been one of my last waking impressions. "The in-
spector told me to keep my mouth shut," I said.

"But eet ees to me— important," protested Pferdminger.

"Why ?" I returned snappishly, as I put on my dressing-

276 HOUSE-MATES

gown. I was recovering, then, all the hard, objective im-
pressions of the night, and my chief concern at the moment
was whether I had made a fool of myself. I could re-
member perfectly the parts played by the other actors, but
the memory of what I, myself, had said or done or felt,
was as faulty as the memory of a book that I had read
without attention. I seemed to have "skipped" in places.

"Zey must not know of men taken into ze house," Pferd-
minger was protesting. "Zat is — important."

"Oh ! rot," I said. "They know all that to begin with."

"No ! no ! ! Zat ees not so . . . " the little man began to
expostulate but I cut him short by leaving the room.

I .found two men, the inspector and a little grey-haired,
brown-eyed man in plain clothes, methodically searching
my sitting-room.

"Just a matter of form," the inspector explained curtly,
as I stared in astonishment. "Have you got a key for
this writin' case?"

I supplied the key and suffered one of the worst mo-
rr-nts of the whole incident, while they opened and glanced
mto half-a-dozen of Judith's letters.

"If you'll be long, I may as well have breakfast," I
ventured after an agonised interval.

The little grey-haired man turned round and gave me
a friendly nod. "Do what you like so long as you don't
leave the house," he said.

The idea of going up to Hill's room came to me as of-
fering a blessed prospect of relief, and then I remembered
that he was away for the week-end. I must, indeed, have
been in a queer condition of mind not to have missed
him through the events of the night. But I was horribly
over-tired and over-strained before the final shock of that
awful discovery. And it seems probable to me that the
condition I have so inadequately described (I do not believe
that it would be possible to describe it convincingly to any
one who had not suffered a similar experience), that and
the profound sleep which followed it, saved me from a
severe nervous disturbance. For an hour or two I had

ROSE WHITING 277

been protected from all further shock to my sensibilities.
If a bomb had fallen at my feet any time after I had left
Bast in that horrible room upstairs, I should have watched
it with a quite impersonal interest. Something in me that
commonly responded to such terrors had been away, or
guarded, or perhaps asleep.

I was almost my normal self again, after I had chased
Pferdminger away from the keyhole of the bedroom door,
and had had my breakfast.

The two officials had completed their investigation be-
fore I had finished ; and began my examination — "taking my
deposition," they called it. And it was during this examina-
tion that for one detestable moment I was afraid I might
be suspected of the murder of Rose Whiting.

The little grey-haired man asked all the questions, and
although his brown eyes had met mine frankly enough
when he had given me permission to have breakfast, he
never once looked at me directly while he conducted my
examination. He did it all with rather a perfunctory air,
as if he were thinking of something else.

"I want you just to give me an account as near as you
can of what happened," he began, and he did not inter-
rupt me while I repeated, in effect, the impressions I have
written here. After I had finished he started all kinds of
apparently irrelevant questions about my profession, my
family, my knowledge of the other people in "73," about
anything but the details of the story I had just told him.

He gave a sort of inconclusive nod when those ques-
tions had been answered, and I thought he had finished.
He was looking out of my window when he began again
abruptly.

"Was there a light in Rose Whiting's room when you
first looked in?"

And for the life of me I could not have answered that
question without consideration. It is a fact that I was
not sure whether or not the gas had been burning.

"There must have been," I said after a very sensible
pause. "I'm sure I didn't light the gas myself."

278 HOUSE-MATES

"Why?" he asked.

"I should have remembered doing that," I replied, not
too readily.

"You are quite sure you didn't light the gas?"

"Quite!"

"But there was a light burning?"

"I couldn't have seen her if there hadn't been," I said.

"What did you say the exact time was?" he put in.

"I think it must have been after one o'clock," I said,
again after a moment's hesitation induced by his sugges-
tion that I had already made a definite statement on that
point.

"How long had the man been gone before you went up ?"
he continued.

"A few minutes, not longer," I said.

"Why did you go?" was his next enquiry, and it was
then that the dreadful fear of being accused came to me.
I could not answer that question in terms that I could
expect him to understand; and while I still hesitated he
confused me still further by adding, "Did you hear her
cry out?"

I believe I was really in danger of temporary arrest at
that moment. I was not absolutely sure whether or not
I had heard a cry, and if I had yielded to my craven im-
pulse to take refuge in that simple explanation, I should
have been open to the gravest suspicion, in as much as
it was a physical impossibility for poor Rose Whiting to have
cried out after that beastly v:ire had strangled her. But I
did not think of that when I answered. I told the truth be-
cause among the absurd tangle of motives that influenced
my replies I reacted against the one that would have made
me attribute my actions to a supernatural agent. For I
was aware in some way that if I had heard a cry, I had
not heard it with my ears.

"Oh! no," I said. "I heard nothing," and saw that I
was, now, apparently committed to the very explanation
I had wished to avoid.

"Ah!" commented my inquisitor, and I knew that he

ROSE WHITING 279

was drawing a false conclusion as to the reason for my
visit. He wore that detestable smile with which so many
men leer at sexual intercourse. His next question con-
firmed me.

"I suppose you were waiting for this chap to go?" he
remarked, looking askew at his note-book.

"Oh! Great Scott, no," I replied fervently. "I only
spoke to her once, ever. One night there was a frightful
row here."

"When was that?" he put in.

"Sometime last October," I said. "Soon after I came
here."

The grey-haired man turned to the inspector. "That
right?" he asked sharply.

"October fourteen," the inspector replied with a nod.

That little interlude, demonstrative of such careful of-
ficial record, made me more determined than ever to keep
to the strict truth. That was my one hope of avoiding a
trap.

"Generally work so late as one o'clock?" the enquirer
continued.

"I have been recently," I said. "I am going in for a
competition and the drawings have to be finished by next
Thursday."

The grey-haired man sighed and suddenly allayed my
fear by dropping his inquisitorial manner and looking- at
me with the same direct stare he had given me before he
had begun his examination.

"We've no suspicions of you, you know, Mr. Hornby,"
he said. "We know more or less who did this, though we
mayn't know his name or where to put our hands upon
him. But if I might suggest it to you, it would be as
well before you answer the coroner just to find out why
you did go up to that gal's room at one o'clock in the
morning."

"The truth is," I replied, "that I had a presentiment
something was up when I saw that chap go out."

The little man pursed his mouth. He could believe me

280 HOUSE-MATES

innocent of murder but his faith in my moral rectitude went
no further than that.

"Bad luck on her, just now, wasn't it?" he remarked
casually. The inspector had shut up his note-book and I
understood that this was mere friendly conversation.

"Why just now?" I asked innocently.

"Well," the little man replied with a shrug. "You saw
her, didn't you?"

"Of course I did," I said.

"Stark?" he added.

"Absolutely," I agreed.

"Well then you know what her condition was?" he said.

But even then I could not follow him.

"Her condition?" I repeated vaguely.

He blew out his lips and winked at the inspector. I had
convinced him of my innocence, but I had lost his respect.

He made a noise as if he were soothing an infant.

"Sh!" was his comment. "She was four or five months
gone, poor gal."

VII

I spent the remainder of the morning in writing to Judith.
I could not work facing the inquisitive crowd that con-
tinually shifted and never diminished, both under my win-
dow and in greater force on the further pavement. When-
ever I showed myself they stared and pointed at me, and
I wondered if they had learnt that I had been the first
to discover the body. There was, of course, no report
in the early Sunday papers, but the story of the murder
had got about in some mysterious way. I saw two or three
men who were obviously reporters attacking the stolid
policeman who stood four square on our top step. His
only reply was to shake his head and wave them away
with a powerfully wooden hand.

Until three o'clock the house was strictly in possession
of the police, who were going diligently through every
room. I could hear their incessant tramping, and the noise

ROSE WHITING 281

of those heavy footsteps got on my nerves after a time —
the only effect that I could trace — of my overstrung condi-
tion of the night.

But at three o'clock we reached a climax with the ar-
rival of the ambulance. I detected a different note in
the rumbling of the crowd as it drove up, and looked
out of the window to see the gaunt horror of the stretcher
being lifted out of the waggon by four policemen. And
I heard the measured tramp of the men as they came
slowly down the stairs, and the strange excited murmur of
voices that swelled into a hoarse rattle as the gratifying
object of the crowd's curiosity was carried across the pave-
ment.

Soon afterwards the little grey-haired man looked into
my room again and gave me an informal notice of the time
and place of the inquest.

"No need for you to stay in, now, if you've a fancy to
go out," he concluded. "I dare say you don't find the
place any too cheerful." And then he advised me that
the reporters would soon "be on my track" if I did not
keep my "eyes skinned"; and warned me to give them
no information of any kind. . . .

I had an unpleasant sense, then, and for many days after-
wards, of this interference with my liberty.

The inquest on the following Tuesday was a more bear-
able ordeal than I had anticipated, and the coroner never
pressed that difficult question of why I had gone up to
Rose Whiting's room in the first instance. He accepted
my statement that I was alarmed when I saw the unknown
man depart, as a perfectly rational cause for making an
enquiry. I suppose he had, in that particular at least,
been advised by the detective or whatever he was who had
cross-examined me. I never learnt his proper status. ^ He
did not appear at the inquest ; all his evidence being given
by the inspector who had accompanied him.

But although there was never any question of my de-
tention, I could not rid myself for a long time of
feeling that I was no longer a free individual. If I was not

HOUSE-MATES

watched by the police, I was a person of inexplicable sig-
nificance to the crowd that for more than a week gaped
and gaped about our front door, and found my presence at
.the window a source of apparently inextinguishable satis-
faction, so that I had to finish my competition drawings
under surveillance. I tried working with the blinds down
and the gas burning, but I found those conditions even
more trying in the bright May noonday than the stupid
staring of the shifting, pointing idlers. And the incessant
annoyance of their subdued chattering seemed to increase
when I shut out the sight of them, as if they found cause
for new suspicion in my desire for privacy. I am sure
some of them suspected me of making away with im-
portant evidence when I took my great bundle of drawings
to the stretcher maker on Thursday morning.

(I am still proud of the fact that I finished those draw-
ings in time. It was all mechanical work, then, I admit,
and some of it was very hurried, at the last, but they were
quite presentable.)

VIII

I have nearly finished this unpleasant chapter, and I shall
be glad when it is done with — all the dreadful sensations
of that time have been revived as I have been writing, so
that the thing has become very real again to me, even
though I may have failed to reproduce a tithe of the horror
and strain that I suffered. But before I leave the subject
I may as well wind up the incident so that I shall not
have to refer to it again.

The effects that the murder had upon the household
at 73 Keppel Street were not important. Lippmann left
the house the day after the inquest, but he was the only
deserter. And Rose Whiting's rooms remained unlet to
the end of the lease. I fancy that Pferdtninger was some-
thing half-hearted in his attempts to get a new tenant, and
the only applicant I ever heard of was a very queer looking
chap who had, I infer, a taste for the morbid. He told

ROSE WHITING 283

Pferdminger that he was writing the story of a murder
and had been waiting for a chance to get the proper atmos-
phere. My door was ajar when he came and I heard
him talking in the hall. He talked a great deal, in a rapid,
high-pitched voice. I received an impression that he was
under the influence of drink or drugs. He was refused
without hesitation.

Pferdminger had had a shock and meant to be very
careful in the future. He was more restrained after the
murder, or that was my impression, but he harboured a
grudge against me ; a fact that had, perhaps, a slight influ-
ence on my career. I believe he thought in face of all
the evidence that he might have pretended innocence of
Rose Whiting's profession to the police if it had not been
for me. Even at the inquest he took elaborate care to
describe her as an actress.

And the murderer, as every one knows, was never caught.
There were many reasons, I have heard, to connect this
crime with the one in Bernard Street, and to point to
their having been committed by the same person. There
was no motive, as the word is commonly understood, in
this connexion. Rose Whiting was probably the victim of
a violent lust for sexual cruelty, which nothing short of
murder could satisfy. So far as society is concerned, that
lust may be considered as a form of insanity, and it seems
to me that the murderer who succumbed to that lust is
not such a reprehensible creature as the man who kept
Rose Whiting through the winter and threw her over when
he found that she was going to bear him a child,
little doubt that that was what had happened. The hypoth-
esis so convincingly explains all the known facts, and
although the man's name did not appear at the inquest
I believe that the> police knew it. And in my opinion i
there was to be a hanging, he was the greater criminal of
the two, and should have suffered the extreme penalty

He may be alive now. If he is, I hope he may read this
and recognise the story of the woman whom I have calle
"Rose Whiting."

XIII
AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

AS my bank balance steadily decreased until the calcula-
tion as to how much longer I could afford to remain
in Keppel Street became an ominously simple sum in mental
arithmetic, so much the stronger grew my determination
to "stick it out" to the last possible moment. I had a
feeling of unjustifiable pride in that intention to "stick it
out." I comforted myself with the phrase. It appealed
to some solid English basis in me that I had inherited
from my father.

The principle of my attitude is not defensible in many
cases. There are occasions when commonsense is a greater
virtue than stolid courage. I have heard how at the be-
ginning of the war our gunners would stick to their guns
when their battery had been located by the enemy, and
how we had to learn from the French that the trained
artilleryman is of greater value than many guns and that
his duty to his commander and his country is to take
cover an(i not to die foolishly and obstinately at his post.
But there was a reason in my case for holding on as long
as possible. My hope of finding a client was not yet dead.
My name was sometimes bracketed with my more suc-
cessful contemporaries in articles that discussed the merits
of the new school in domestic architecture. And I saw
that should a commission eventually come my way, I stood
a very good chance of losing it, if I had no office of my
own.

284

285

That, however, was my one justification of any worth;
and on the other side was a whole array of considerations
which made it advisable for me to save what I could while
had the opportunity. By selling my furniture I could
have lived, economically, in one room for another six months
at least, while now I risked complete destitution.

I consoled myself by postulating that at the worst I
could always find work as an assistant, but that resource,
also, I meant to postpone as long as I could; and mean-
while I began present economies by saving in food. For
a whole week I had dinner at the inclusive cost of nine pence
at a little eating house off the Tottenham Court Road;
but one night such a feeling of disgust took hold of me
that I could never endure the sight — no, I think it must
have been the smell — of the place again. Afterwards I
got much less nourishment for the same price at an A.B.C.
or an Express Dairy ; but I suffered less nervously.

Also, I began to prepare my own breakfast, instead of
buying it from Pferdminger, and that saving altogether
apart from economical reasons, was another means of pro-
longing my stay in Keppel Street.

Pferdminger, as I have said, had a grudge against me;
and as soon as he began to suspect that I was in financial
low water, he found occasion to annoy me in small ways.
He ceased to wait upon me himself, and the slovenly girl
who was the Pferdminger's only servant had apparently
been instructed that my bell was the least important in
the house. My brass plate was allowed to become so
tarnished that I swallowed my pride and polished it my-
self every morning; always with the ridiculous fear in
my mind that the long expected client might come at last
and catch me in the act. But the most pointed of his
innuendoes was the sudden solicitude he displayed with re-
gard to the payment of his weekly bills. That bill was
now scrupulously presented every Saturday morning, and
he took the further precaution of coming up with it him-
self to avoid any possible procrastination.
He must have meant that as an insult; he could not

286 HOUSE-MATES

have been uneasy as to receiving ultimate payment while
he had the security of all my furniture and effects. No, the
truth is that he disliked me, and wanted to revenge him-
self, not only for the part I had played in the Whiting
tragedy but, also, for my treatment of him. I had in-
sulted him on the morning after Helen had come down
to my room, and for that, and for my general attitude of
superiority to him — an attitude to which I must plead guilty
without the shadow of an excuse — he had his knife into me
— to use the cant phrase.

He would have given me notice to leave if he had not
been afraid of me. Little money-grubber that he was, he
would, I am sure, have sacrificed three months' rent in
order to be even with me.

It is curious that I should write so bitterly of him,
now. I certainly bear him no grudge. But always as I
write I recover my mood of the moment, and I cannot
deny that in July, 1906, when I was run down in health
and nervously worried, my dislike for Pferdminger was a
positive factor in my life.

And that factor played quite an important part in my
determination to remain in Keppel Street until the end of
the lease. I would not be beaten by him. I believe it was
partly on this account that I relinquished one of the last
strongholds of my pride and went out one morning to apply
for a job in the office of my old colleague, Horton-Smith.

II

It may be thought that I was deliberately courting an
additional humiliation by applying to a man who had been
my equal in Lincoln's Inn. But apart from the main reason
for going to Horton-Smith, I was in a state of mind just
then which made the tedious explanations and the demon-
stration of my capacity as an assistant almost unbearable.
If I must accept degradation, I wished to plunge and be

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 287

done with it. Smith knew my abilities as well as I did
myself.

But what I have called my main reason was an emi-
nently sound and rational one. Horton-Smith's "luck" had
held, and he had won the big competition which had oc-
cupied all my best energies for three months, the competi-
tion upon which I had toiled so arduously to the accom-
paniment of that muttering crowd who had gaped at me
after the murder.

I saw the announcement — a five-line paragraph at the
foot of the column — in the daily paper which Hill lent me
after I had cut down the extravagance of a separate sub-
scription. Hill knew that I was hard up, but I had dis-
guised the real truth from him. He believed that I was
merely being prudent in anticipation of future difficulties.
He was not a man who could be easily deceived, and I
flatter myself that I played my part rather well.

I was not crushed when I saw that I had failed again.
I knew the chances of competition work too well to count
upon any probability of winning, and as always happens
to me, as soon as my design was finished I began to criticise
it. In the six weeks that elapsed between the time my
drawings went in and the date of the announcement, I
had fairly convincingly persuaded myself that I was not
going to win.

And I accepted Smith's success as an omen. I had
been given, I thought, the choice of this opportunity. For
I rightly counted it as almost a certainty that I should get
a job as his assistant. This competition was the biggest
thing he had touched— the estimate was for £80,000— and
he would need a larger staff. Moreover, I considered it
probable that among all possible applicants he would choose
me. I smiled at the reflection that it was a Friday and
the 1 3th of the month; I included that fact in the general
portent of the omen as a mark of my entry into servitude.

I took the paper up to Hill's room before I went.

"I'm going out to get a job," I told him. "It means
wealth— four, perhaps five, pounds a week."

288 HOUSE-MATES

"How do you know you'll get it?" he asked.

"I just know," I said. "It's by way of being an after-
math." And I pointed out the five line paragraph. "You
see, as luck will have it," I added, "Horton-Smith's an old
stable-companion of mine. We were in our articles to-
gether, sometime last century."

Hill sat up in bed. "Look here, Hornby," he said; "if
it's just a question of tiding over . . ."

"It's mainly a question of my not being a silly ass," I
interrupted him. "Besides which it's a Friday and the I3th
of the month. I might get six pounds a week with luck."

I left him looking puzzled and a trifle downcast.

in
/

Horton-Smith's offices were still in Verulam Buildings,
but he no longer lived there, as he had done when he first
started in private practice. Indeed, I found that in addi-
tion to the three rooms which composed the suite of cham-
bers on the second floor he now rented another room on
the floor above as a tracing office.

He explained all that as soon as I had congratulated him
on his latest success. He was a good fellow, and I could
make allowance for a slight touch of swelled head that
morning, although those symptoms made the offer of my
degradation a trifle harder to make.

"Well, look here, old chap; I've really come to see you
on a matter of business," was my method of plunging into
his explanation that he would, now, have to get rid of
his lease, or sublet his present chambers — to take larger
offices.

He looked at me keenly when I said that. I have no
doubt my manner put him on the alert. And he was a
good business man. He won his competitions on his plan-
ning— the two things go together.

"That's good," he commented.

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 289

"I want you to give me a job— as an assistant," I ex-
plained.

"By Gad, I'm sorry, old chap," he said. "Have you made
a mess of it, somehow?"

"Well, I've got no work in hand," I said, "and I've just
failed to win an eighty-thousand pound competition."

He whistled and tried to cover a triumphant smile.
"Great Scott, were you in for it ?" he remarked. "I'm lucky.
The drawings are on view this morning, just over the way.
Shall we run over and have a look at 'em ?"

"We'll settle the business arrangement first," I said. "I
want to know what you'll give me. I'm not cheap, you'll
understand, but I know my value," and I could not resist
the temptation to cool him down a little, by adding, "espe-
cially to you."

He smiled rather self-consciously. "Do you?" he said,
attempting the air of a thoroughly successful architect.

"Rather!" I replied. "I'll help you to get a decent ele-
vation for once. That's the one thing you can't do."

He bit his lip and frowned with just the old boyish ex-
pression he used to wear when Geddes and I chaffed him
about his designs in Lincoln's Inn; and then he laughed
good-humouredly.

"Oh ! well, there's something in it," he confessed. "How
much do you want?"

"Well, you could hardly pay such an expert adviser as
I am less than six pounds a week," I said.

He made a wry face but he did not attempt to bargain
with me. "All serene," he said, and added, "I shan't want
you for a couple of months, of course."

I had not thought of that awful proviso; and I dare
say he would not have made it if I had not asked so
high a salary. In two months I should be on the rates
unless I sold my furniture or borrowed from Hill. But
for the life of me I could not humble myself further to
Horton-Smith. I had reached some barrier that I could
not overstep, at that moment. I suppose the easiness of
our relations had given me a sense of retaining my equality

290 HOUSE-MATES

with him in spite of temporary embarrassments., In any
case, I could not face the admission that I was almost a
pauper. I should have had to plead with him.

"About the middle of September," I said carelessly. "Do
you expect to be in your new offices by then? Of course,
if anything turns up to prevent my coming to you, I'll let
you know in good time."

"Thanks! Yes," he agreed; but I saw that he had no
doubt of getting me.

Afterwards we went over to the Holborn Town Hall
together and viewed the acres of stretchers that were hung
there. If there was anything in the arrangement of those
drawings, my entry must have stood well with the as-
sessors, for Horton-Smith's, the second premiated design,
my own and one other, shared the place of honour on a
big screen •'et across at the end of the room.

I had hopefully and yet sadly adopted the motto
"Dumspiro," writing it in one word ; and that, I think, was
the only thing I was ashamed of when I saw my drawings
again — drawings so tragically rich in association ; every
line of that hasty "lettering" cried aloud to me that two
months ago there had been a murder in Keppel Street.
Horton-Smith had unimaginatively signed his work
"Munting," a joiner's word for the middle stile, or the
mullion, of a framed door. But I think it represented him
better than he knew. It so well suggested his conscious-
ness of being in the centre of things.

I had the upper hand in our critical exchanges ; my plan
certainly stood the test of comparison better than his eleva-
tion. He admitted that, with just a touch of pique, and
explained that he had always meant to reconsider the ex-
terior if he got the job. And to cover his admission he
gave me a lecture on the advisability of being practical
in work of this kind. "It's the plan that decides most com-
petitions," he said. "Now where I think you went
wrong . . ."

We were absolutely agreed that the second premiated

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 291

design — the brute who sent it in got £50— was dreadfully
poor stuff. That fifty pounds would have helped me to
beat Pferdminger hands down.

IV

I was crossing Bloomsbury Square when I realised that
I was not the least anxious to return to Keppel Street;
and I had at the same moment a sense of loss which I
failed immediately to understand. I fancied, at first, that it
must have something to do with Judith ; but when I thought
of her I understood that my love for her was in no way
related to my associations with the house in which I had
met her. No, so far as she was concerned, my morning's
work had brought golden promise. Economically we were
free to marry as soon as she could find release from at-
tendance on the aunt who still hovered between death and
recovery. With my £300 a year and Judith's £200 we could
be married in the autumn. For her letters had told me
that she had no further doubt of herself. Our correspond-
ence had grown more passionate in the last few weeks.
We had ceased to disguise our longing for each other.
My new employment had, in fact, brought the promise of
happiness very near to me, and yet I had a sense of loss.

And when I recognised it, it seemed at first sight so
trivial and absurd that I laughed aloud in the desert of
my separation from the casual pedestrians in the Square.
I was no longer tied to my rooms by the uncertain joys of
expectation. My hope of that dilatory, emancipating client
had vanished. I had accepted the choice of servitude, and
automatically I was relieved from the pains of indecision.
What was there to regret ? I asked myself. For the present,
I might sell my furniture and take two months holiday
somewhere near Cheltenham— I need do no work during
that time ; and Heaven knows that I wanted a rest. In the
immediate future I might marry Judith and settle down on
what was after all a quite sufficient income. And as to the

292 HOUSE-MATES

dim future that, too, would not be so gloomy. I knew that
I was a better architect than Horton-Smith. I could make
myself invaluable to him. I might reasonably look for-
ward to some kind of partnership with him at no very
distant time.

And then I looked up and saw a strange fascia glar-
ing along the whole front of respectable houses that faced
me across the Square. "Wilfred Hornby: Failure," was
the shout of that great sign and I felt that all London was
pointing at me.

I had given up the fight. I was the man who had ac-
cepted security at the price of his individuality. I was
ready to take in exchange this partnership with a man who
would never allow me a free hand. I knew well enough
what that collaboration with Horton-Smith would mean,
and most certainly it did not mean the development of my
ideals. He was a practical business man with a good head
for arrangement and construction. And inevitably he would
use me for mere money-making. I should turn my back on
ideals and become fat and prosperous. I should creep back
into the shell that had, as I thought, been so effectively
broken by the passions, terrors and interests that had pierced
me in that wonderful house in Keppel Street — the house to
which I wanted to return no more.

My body was weak and my mind extraordinarily clear
as the result of my recent fasting, and I look no further
than that for an explanation of my vivid illusion that the
proclamation of my failure was written in fire across the
dull solemnity of Bloomsbury Square. I knew perfectly
well that no eye but my own could see that denouncement
of my insignificance, and yet I crept away shamefaced, as
if I were branded with the visible stigma of disgrace. I
retreated aimlessly and was hardly aware of my surround-
ings until I found myself on the diagonal path that would

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 293

lead me to the still centre of the gardens in Lincoln's Inn
Fields.

I found a seat there and rested for a time among the tired
driftings of humanity that had been whirled out of the
booming tornado of London traffic.

I wanted to hold my thoughts steady in order that I might
make a new inquiry into my position, reconsider my de-
termination to sell my artistic ideals; but I found that I
had no power of guiding my 'mental processes. I saw
clearly, but I could not choose my subject. Nevertheless
it seems to me, now, that some control — it may have been
nothing more than a congruous association of ideas — exer-
cised a faculty of selection. It was almost certainly asso-
ciation that set me thinking of Parkinson's job with its
Queen Anne gables.

I had denied my artistic conscience in that case without a
struggle, and I had sneered at Geddes for reproaching me ;
but I found no fault with myself on that score. Parkinson's
commission had been a stepping stone to private practice
and the free hand that was my ultimate goal. And I had
not, then, committed myself as I should now commit my-
self, forever, by accepting the dictates of Horton-Smith.
Moreover, that remote concession was made in the days
before I went to Keppel Street. . . .

I lost sight of the old bargain with my conscience in the
new suggestion. I thought of the change in myself. I af-
firmed the fact of change with a feeling of satisfaction.
And then the panorama of my recent life passed before
the background of my mind and temporarily obscured the
consideration of my immediate problem.

I saw bright, fascinating pictures that seemed to con-
dense experience into a single movement.

The figure of the unhappy Rose Whiting danced before
me, passing through rapid phases of eagerness, resent-
ment and determination before she. slid away cowering,
with her eyes fixed in a beseeching stare of horror and
dismay.

Behind her came Mrs. Hargreave, sturdily erect, with a

294- HOUSE-MATES

fanatic gaze that was fixed too intently on some imagined
thing she had abstracted from the great content of life.
And behind her the face of her husband flashed up for a
moment, like the face of a wild creature that moodily paced
a cage it had not the courage to destroy.

And I saw Helen, absorbed in the contemplation of her
own misery ; a drooping, despondent figure, that passed with
a moody resentment.

And then I tried to conjure up a vision of Judith, and
the picture broke like an interrupted dream.

I became aware of the bright July day, and the hissing
tremor of the tall trees that responded to a wind of
which I was barely sensible. And high up through the
leaves I could see the open blue of bright sky, and the
bellying sails of majestic cloud, exquisitely white, that set
a slow course across the great width of heaven. A little
whirlwind of dust leaped and spun for an instant across
the gravel playground.

I felt as if life was momentarily arrested ; as if the wind
and the cloud and the dust alone moved, while humanity
waited for a new impulse.

I looked out towards the invisible windows of my old
office across the Fields. I had begun there, shaping my
desires within the shell. I had touched the need for a
larger expression at Keppel Street. And, now, I waited
for a fresh impulse. I was in the calm centre of the storm,
relieved of the need for volition. Beside me an old man,
with a grimy, deeply-furrowed face, stared lifelessly be-
fore him, as if for him the need of a new impulse had
passed forever.

I got up impatiently and marched back into the wind
and stress of Holborn. My resolve had crystallised into
the bathos of an intention to drive away dreams by indulg-
ing myself with a sufficient meal. I wanted food and energy
to take up the fight again. And, at least, I would not be
beaten by Pferdminger. I would stay at "73" until my
time was up, cost me what it might.

I had still two months of hope.

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 295

VI

I calculated that with care I could make my present re-
sources last for three weeks. I had closed my banking
account and now carried my entire capital in my trousers
pocket. When that money had gone, I counted on my
watch and my case of mathematical instruments to keep
me for another three weeks. The last fortnight must be
paid for by selling books or a piece of furniture, unless I
could manage to earn something before then — by writing
another article, for instance. My calculations were based
on an outlay of thirty-five shillings a week, of which Pferd-
minger took twenty-two and sixpence for rent and gas —
the latter charge being based on an estimate of sixpence a
burner including a gas ring in the bedroom where I now
cooked my own breakfast. I worked out this summary
of my resources after a really satisfactory meal that had
cost me nearly three shillings, and I felt exceedingly hope-
ful. Incidentally I included that meal as a part of my
capital. I meant to eat no more that day except for a
little bread and butter with a cup of tea in my own room
before I went to bed.

That problem of economising in food began to fascinate
me in the course of the next two weeks. Now that the
period of my poverty was definitely fixed, this game of
trying to save something out of the twelve and sixpence
left to me for food and washing had no terrors. I looked
forward to future compensations and had no feeling of
present martyrdom. Indeed, I think that I enjoyed this
juggling with small sums of money. The four shillings
and sevenpence that I managed to save out of my first
week's allowance gave me a delightful sense of living within
my means; and I never once reproached myself for past
extravagances.

I saw the announcement of Gladys's wedding on the
Tuesday after I had seen Horton-Smith. Morrison Blake's
celebrity had earned him a two-inch paragraph in the Daily

296 HOUSE-MATES

Telegraph. I was surprised that the wedding should have
been delayed so long. Whenever I had thought of my
cousin since the great row at Ken Lodge, I had thought
of her as Blake's wife. But when I came to consider the
probable cause of the postponement, I attributed it to
Blake's procrastination. No doubt, he had not been too
willing to give up the opulent freedom of his bachelor-
hood. I wondered whether Gladys had had much difficulty
to induce him finally to fix the date? I guessed that she
had managed him tactfully but, towards the end, very
firmly.

And it was on the following Thursday that I received
a short note from Aunt Agatha expressing surprise that
I had never been to see them, referring to Gladys's wedding
with a hint of stating a grievance against me for not at-
tending it, and asking me if I would not have dinner with
them on that day week — "just Lady Hoast, and one or
two people," she added, probably as a hint that I should
be expected to dress.

My first impulse was to refuse, but after deliberating the
invitation over my preparations for breakfast, I decided
to accept for two reasons. The first and more important
was that I should be able to save at least a shilling, and
get a tremendously, reinforcing meal; the second was that
since my pride would not be hurt, the offer of reconcilia-
tion having come from them, I might as well make use of
my uncle if his recommendation were still available. It
was just possible that he might have a client in view for
me, and that I might at this eleventh hour be saved from
Horton-Smith and the expediency of his practical de-
signs.

But chiefly I looked forward to the dinner, and was
horribly tempted once or twice to anticipate the spending
of that extra shilling.

The twenty-sixth was an abominably hot day. London
was just at the beginning of that heat wave which scorched
us in 1906. And although I enjoy hot weather as a rule,
it interfered in this case with my arrangements for at-

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 297

tending my aunt's dinner-party. I had intended to walk.
I was determined not to throw away the cost of half a
week's living on a cab. But without an overcoat and in
full evening dress I could not face Camden Town High
Street ; while, if I wore an overcoat, I foresaw that the heat
would be too much for my shirt and collar. I decided at
last to take the bus to Hampstead Station, and then walk,
very slowly, up the hill.

I allowed plenty of time, but I was amazed at the ef-
fect the heat had upon me. I took off my overcoat as soon
as I reached East Heath Road ; but even then I had to stop
and rest every minute or two for fear of getting too hot.
I remember that I kept mopping my face with my spare
handkerchief and commenting under my breath that I
seemed to be as weak as a rat.

When I got to Ken Lodge I was five minutes late, but
my shirt front was as stiff as a cuirass.

I entered the drawing room with quite a gay feeling of
lightness and clearness. I greeted my aunt with, I thought,
an appropriate ease of manner; and then shook hands with
my uncle a little carelessly — I meant him to understand
from the outset that I regarded myself as the injured party.
And I found that I was no longer afraid of him. The
portentous wink with which he returned my salutation
made me want to laugh.

There were, I believe, four other people present besides
Lady Hoast — who was gracious enough to remember me—
but three of them seem to have made no impression on
my mind. I could not be sure, now, whether I had ever
met them before or whether they were perfect strangers
to me. The fourth was a thick-set, clean-shaven man, witl
an intelligent, keen face. He was introduced to me by my
uncle as Mr. Henry Graham ; a name that I felt I ought
to remember. I thought he stared at me rather curiously ;
but I was conscious that both my uncle and aunt, also, looked
at me now and again with a kind of quick furtweness. .1
peeped down at my shirt-front, afraid that it had, after
begun to show signs of buckling; and when Lwas reas-

298 HOUSE-MATES

sured upon that point I began to wonder if I were not,
perhaps, behaving a little oddly. I felt a tremendous con-
fidence in myself, but 'I could not be perfectly sure that
I was saying the right things. Occasionally I would be-
come aware of the sound of my own voice speaking, and be
quite uncertain what I had been saying.

Fortunately dinner was announced almost immediately,
and I knew that if there was anything wrong with me it
was emptiness. I had had nothing to eat since my bread
and butter breakfast. I felt that it would be sheer ex-
travagance to eat with that feast ahead of me.

And, indeed, the soup — it was mock-turtle — had an imme-
diate effect upon me. The slight feeling of being light-
headed left me, and I began a perfectly reasonable conversa-
tion with Lady Hoast on the subject of motor-traction.
She regarded tubes and motor buses, I believe, as being al-
most works of the devil.

"Those awful tubes," I remember her saying, "so noisy —
and the atmosphere. I thought I should certainly faint
the last time I went in one."

I think I replied that tubes had their obvious disadvan-
tages and added very reasonably that the new tube from
Charing Cross to Hampstead would nevertheless have been
a great convenience to me that evening.

We had had fish and an entree before I became aware
that the heat of the room was getting horribly oppressive.
I was wet with perspiration, my heart was beating at a
most unholy pace ; and, most curious of all, I was suddenly
seized with an unaccountable distaste for food.

I frowned. It seemed to me that I frowned quite tre-
mendously. I was afraid of doing something to disgrace
myself. And then Lady Hoast most unexpectedly began
to sail slowly up towards the ceiling, and at the same mo-
ment I had a blissful sense that it didn't matter a damn
what she or I or any one else present was doing. I dare
say that the pendulum of my uncle's clock had barely time
to swing a full arc between my sight of the ascending Lady
Hoast and the moment when I fell into an immense abyss

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 299

of darkness ; but in that fraction of a second I was able to
realise that I had no further responsibility of any kind
towards my partner, my uncle, my aunt, or any one else
at the table. They were all phantoms of my imagination.
I recognised that they had no relation to me or to the great
reality which was sweeping me down into the great void.
If they had, I didn't care.

VII

When I returned from my unremembered journey into
space, and took another peep at the Earth through the
vehicle of Wilfred Hornby's senses, my first shocked im-
pressions were of an overpowering smell of brandy and
an unpleasant dampness; the latter condition being due, as
I learnt afterwards, to Lady Hoast's prompt but ineffectual
first aid. My next, which succeeded very quickly, were the
strange facts that my collar and shirt were unbuttoned,
that I was lying flat on the hearth-rug in my uncle's study
and that my uncle and Henry Graham were kneeling by
my side and bending over me."

"I'm all right, now," I said. "It was the heat."

"Hum! Hum! Better lie still till Reynolds comes—
he'll be here in a moment," my uncle advised me.

"But really, I'm perfectly all right, now," I insisted. "A
little giddy, that's all." But I lay still, nevertheless. I
had been impressed by the fact that Dr. Reynolds had
been sent for. I was not sure that I might not be much
more ill than I felt.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You fainted dead away across the table, my boy," Gra-
ham answered. "You've been unconscious for the best
part of twenty minutes."

I remembered my vision of the ascendant Lady Hoast.
"I say, I'm sorry, Uncle," I apologised. "But look here
hadn't you better go back? I shall be all right here till

300 HOUSE-MATES

Reynolds comes; and as a matter of fact, I'm perfectly
well now."

"What I can't understand . . ." my uncle began, and
stopped abruptly to listen to the sound of the front door
being opened and the voice of Reynolds in the hall.

"Well, well, here he is," he continued, and got up to meet
the doctor in the doorway.

Reynolds seemed at first to regard me as a joke. "Fainted,
eh?" he remarked when the elements of the case had been
presented to him. "Dear me, and what have you been up
to, young man? Living too fast, eh?"

But there was something dramatic in the change that
came over him when he began to examine me. The hand
he laid first upon my pulse and then upon my heart moved
with a sudden quick suspicion to my ribs, and I saw his
expression of cheerful banter draw into a puzzled frown.

"Can you sit up?" he asked, and when I had obeyed
him without much difficulty, he helped me to my feet. I
felt empty and still a trifle giddy, but I was able to stand
without support.

My uncle had, also, noticed Reynolds's new gravity, for
he began to clear his throat heroically, and then came out
with, "Nothing serious, Reynolds? Er — er — nothing very
serious, is it?"

Reynolds looked up with a glance of enquiry at Gra-
ham, who was standing thoughtfully in the background.

"If you'd sooner I went . . ." he replied, and left us at
once, but I do not think he had anything to learn from the
doctor.

My uncle had been either less observant, or was deter-
mined to disbelieve the evidence of his eyes. He mumbled
out something in which the word "heart" was the one clearly
emphasised word.

"His heart's as sound as a bell," Reynolds returned
curtly. "My dear Williams, the boy's starving — there's
nothing else wrong with him. Put him to bed and give
him some good beef-tea with a drop of brandy in it. And
see that he takes it slowly."

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 301

(I never dared to ask; but I am afraid there can be no
doubt that the beginnings of that excellent dinner had
been wasted so far as I was concerned. I was certainly
aware of a great emptiness.)

I resigned myself to the arm-chair and waited for them
to dispose of me. I was full of shame and apology, but
I had come to the end of my energy, and the task of ex-
planation was beyond me for the time being. Also, I was
surprised to find that the anticipation of beef-tea and
brandy aroused no sort of enthusiasm. It may be that
the reek of brandy still so unpleasantly dominating my
every impression had given me a temporary distaste for
that medicine. I know that the smell of it filled me with
repugnance for months afterwards.

"No more brandy," I put in feebly, at the first oppor-
tunity.

Reynolds nodded. "All right," he said, and then ad-
vised my uncle to get me to bed as soon as possible.

They did not keep me waiting very long for that relief.
It seemed that preparations had been begun before
Reynolds's arrival. And the beef-tea when it came un-
flavoured by any stimulant was quite acceptable. My aunt
came up with it, herself, and explained that it had been
intended for her own consumption. She was trying a super-
feeding treatment, she told me, for some obscure disease
of the nerves from which she had been recently suffering.

I hope that I was politely sympathetic.

I slept like a child and woke ravenous.

I had three poached eggs and a glass of milk for break-
fast.

After that I was practically normal again, if still a trifie
weak. And neither then nor at any time since have I
suffered any unpleasant consequences from the effect of
that six weeks or so of underfeeding.

I do not know if my case was, for any reasons, a
exceptional one.

302 HOUSE-MATES

VIII

I had to dress in the wrecks of my overnight splendour.
I had received no instructions to stay in bed, but I suppose
they had been taken for granted. I know that my uncle,
whom I found alone in the breakfast-room, looked uncom-
monly surprised to see me, and laid great stress on the
"inadvisability" of my having got up so soon.

"Er — er, now what do you propose to do?" he asked when
I had assured him of my ability to stand.

"First of all go back to my rooms and change," I said.

"You're still in Keppel Street?" he asked dubiously, and
when I replied that I was, he frowned and winked and
hum'ed his sincerest disapproval. "After that terrible case
— I saw you gave evidence," he scolded me. "Hm! How
— how you could ever expect a client to come there —
Absurd."

"By Jove! that never occurred to me," I ejaculated. It
is true that I had given no thought to that obvious con-
sideration.

"You must come and live here for a time," my uncle
said.

I shook my head decidedly. I could not go back to that
atmosphere of suburban respectability. I had been alive
and free for nine months, and a free man does not will-
ingly return to imprisonment. Moreover, 73 Keppel Street
had become a home to me, and I meant to stay there as
long as possible. Everything that had ever deeply af-
fected me was associated with the place. The house was
full of my friends.

"I could not do that," I said.

My uncle's wink somehow conveyed his deepest sus-
picion and displeasure.

"We — we must talk this over, Wilfred," he said. "I —
I feel responsible. I am not going to the office this morn-
ing. You shall have the brougham to take you to — to your

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 303

lodgings— to change. And I should like you to come straight
back here — the brougham will wait."

I agreed to that. I was glad to be saved the necessity
of travelling by bus to Bloomsbury Street, in evening dress,
and with a collar that had suffered severely from brandy
and water.

I found a letter from Judith awaiting me at Keppel
Street, and she enclosed postal orders for £5. Hill had
written to her and reported that he thought I was over-
doing the economy business, particularly in the matter of
food. She did not scold me for deceiving her, but her
letter was full of anxiety; and she deplored her inability
to come up to town and look after me. Her aunt, it seemed,
was worse, and might die almost any day. Her final in-
junction was that I "must have proper meals," whatever
happened.

I kept the brougham waiting while I answered that let-
ter, and I was thankful that I could at least relieve her
of all anxiety on my account. I returned the postal orders
as an earnest of my newly assured position; and told her
that I should certainly have kept them if they had come one
day earlier.

Perhaps it was as well that they did come a day late. . . .

I found that my uncle had worked up a pretty grievance
against me when we had our promised interview. He
kept his hurt steadily in the foreground as he talked, harp-
ing on the note of an insistent "Why?" Why hadn't I been
near them? Why hadn't I explained? And he gave me
clearly to understand that he had a grave doubt whether
the atmosphere of the house in Keppel Street had not seri-
ously impaired my morals.

Indeed, it was not until I had given him an account of
my engagement to Judith that he showed any sign of be-
ing ready to condone my manifold errors of commission
and omission. And from first to last he never gave me
the least hint of the real reason for his long silence.—
learnt that from Aunt Agatha after lunch. "You see,
Wilfred," she explained, "it would have been rather pain-

304 HOUSE-MATES

ful for Gladys to meet you again before she was married."
I wondered if Gladys had been spiteful.

But after Judith's most reputable ancestry had been re-
ported— her father had been a colonel in the Indian army —
my uncle allowed a suggestion of graciousness to become
visible through his mannerisms. He had a dry humour
of his own and remarked that he had not expected me to
find a Lillie in the desert of Keppel Street — I had, wisely,
I think, suppressed all mention of Judith's brief ambition
to go on the stage and her assumed name of Carrington.
And, then, having winked himself past that little jest, he
opened the important subject of Henry Graham.

Graham was, according to Uncle David, the ideal, the
almost mythical, client that inspires the more brilliant day
dreams of the young architect. He represented that won-
derful thing Influence. His present requirements so far
as they concerned me might possibly be insignificant, but
if he "took me up" — a quite magical phrase, in this con-
nexion— there was, I inferred, little he could not do for
me. His chief interest was the celebrated Mechanical
Waggon Co. of which he was the director and principal
shareholder; but he was "in" everything that mattered, my
uncle said, and he made no secret of the fact that he, him-
self, had long been angling for a share of Graham's legal
business.

And then he went on in his own peculiar unreproducible
way to tell me how he had mentioned my name to Graham
and given an account of my abilities. And despite the
aggravated complication of his mannerisms — they were be-
coming more marked with age, I noticed — I understood
how he had wanted to make amends for his neglect of
me ; even before he had realised to what straits I had been
reduced. He almost apologised, so anxious was he, now, to
do what he might have called "the right thing by me."

Nevertheless when I again refused his offer to make a
temporary home for me at Ken Lodge, he displayed the
old inclination to hector. Perhaps he was glad of the ex-
cuse to cover up the signs of his recent weakness. It was

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 305

almost with an air of challenge that he finally announced
his intention of financing me until I was firmly on my feet.
Afterwards I wondered if his offer of a home had not
been made to save the expense of making me an allowance.
I hope I am not doing him an injustice in admitting that
speculation of mine ; but his queer habit of miserliness was
another characteristic that developed very noticeably in his
last years.

IX

I met Graham by appointment the following week. He
had a great block of offices in Victoria Street, and almost
my first remark to him was a criticism of their darkness
and inconvenience.

"I suppose you'd like the job of designing new ones for
me," he replied with a dry smile; and I made sure that
I was going to make a mess of the interview.

"Well, you certainly want them," I said.

He looked at me keenly and shook his head. "London
wants rebuilding," he remarked, "but it'll have to want,
and so shall I. The problem is land, my boy." He gave
me no time to answer that — not that I had any answer
ready for him — but went on at once to tell me why he had
sent for me.

"I've put up a little test for you, Hornby," he explained.
"You rather took my fancy the other night, but I want
to see what you're made of; so I've asked a friend of
mine to meet you here. He's going to build what he calls
a cottage near Haslemere somewhere, and I'd just like to
see how far you're going to be amenable. Look here, now,
I'll tell you what I mean. D'you know an architect fellow
called Geddes ?"

"We were in the same office together," I said.

"Well, then I needn't tell you the sort of pig-headed
fool he is," Graham went on. "I put some work in his
way a few months ago— I'm interested in a good many build-
ing projects— and he'd have got a lot more if he had been

306 HOUSE-MATES

reasonably amenable — but he was altogether too autocratic.
Now, that doesn't do, you understand. A man knows
within certain limits the sort of thing he wants. He mayn't
know the difference between a Gothic and a Renaissance
moulding, but he has a general idea of what style is going
to suit him. He's out to buy something, and he's going
to buy the kind of thing he wants, and not the kind of
thing Mr. Geddes considers to be the one and only perfect
design. Your friend Geddes is too arbitrary."

"Is he?" I said thoughtfully.

Already my idealist visions of a free hand were dis-
solving. The phantom of my ambitions was giving place
to the detestable hard outlines of modern realism; and I
foresaw that the prospect of working for Graham might
not differ so very materially from the prospect of working
for Horton-Smith.

"Now, you strike me as being a practical, capable sort
of chap . . ." Graham was saying.

And were my ideals, after all, worth striving for? was
the question I had to answer.

Graham's friend, his name was George Bertrand, came
in before I had had time to settle that problem.

He was a dark, fleshy man, and I guessed that he had
a strain of Jew in him — the shape and expression of his
eyes were certainly not English. Nevertheless his speech
was English enough, and he displayed, I thought, a typically
English attitude with regard to architecture.

For after we had discussed the site and accommodation
for his proposed "cottage" — he intended to spend £8,000
on the actual building — he gave me his idea of what he
was likely to require in the matter of style.

"Nothing highfalutin — something solid and comfortable
and English," he said. "What about Georgian, now ? Some-
thing that suggests endurance, eh ?"

"I agree with solid and comfortable and English," I said,
"but Georgian is no more English than the Parthenon."

"It's been acclimatised," he said, "like the deodar."

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 307

"But has failed as yet to accommodate its appearance to
the English landscape," I said.

"Well, it's up to you to make it," he retorted.

"Then it would no longer be recognisable as Georgian,"
I replied.

"What I want is a small English country house," he
insisted. "What about Elizabethan if Georgian doesn't suit
your ideas?"

"Why not a twentieth century house that would repre-
sent you and your own time ?" I asked. "Why should you
want to copy the middle-ages in architecture? You don't
wear mediaeval clothes."

"Meaning you're struck with this New Art fad?" he
suggested.

"No," I said definitely. "I don't want to copy even
that. I want to design you a house to live in. You wouldn't
like me to make it a copy of an old house inside — you'll
want bath-rooms and central heating, and electric light,
and everything that is modern and convenient."

"Oh! that's right enough," he put in, with a touch of
approval.

"Then why should you want the outside to be a sham?"
I asked. "Why shouldn't the house be your house out-
side as well as in ? The house of George Bertrand, Esquire ;
designed and built in the year of grace 1906. You won't
be ashamed of having built it, yourself, I suppose?"

Bertrand looked at Graham, winked and scratched the
back of his neck. "What do you think, Harry?" he asked.

Graham was stroking his jaw. He looked at me as he
said, "The point is whether we're willing to be educated ?'

"Aren't you trying to educate people about motor ve-
hicles?" I put in eagerly. "Do you find that the public
always knows — well, what's best for it?"

"I don't," Graham returned drily.

"Of course, you don't," I agreed. "You're a specialist.
When one goes to a specialist one goes for advice. Well,
I'm a specialist, too."

Graham was smiling. "Here, wait a minute," he said,

308 HOUSE-MATES

shaking his finger at me. "I'd like just to draw your at-
tention to one little difference between you and the other
specialists. It's this. If a man comes to me, or to a doctor
or a lawyer, we've only got to consider his requirements ;
but you and your friend Geddes and the rest of you in-
spired architects aren't thinking of your clients so much
as your Art. You want to satisfy or to improve the aesthetic
of all England. You want Bertrand's house, for instance,
to be a bright and shining example of how to do it, for all
the country side."

"Of course, I do," I said. "Don't you, sir?" I added,
addressing Bertrand.

He did not answer me, but looked doubtfully at Graham.
I believed that I could manage Bertrand.

Graham shrugged his shoulders. "The point is whether
we are prepared to accept you as an inspired prophet of
the new style," he remarked. "We might prefer to put our
money on Aston Webb or Norman Shaw."

"If you come to me, you come to buy the goods I have
to sell," I said obstinately.

"And you won't accommodate yourself to sell any
others?" Graham asked.

"I'm not a specialist in any others," I said. "I shouldn't
come to you to buy a stage coach."

Bertrand was grinning, but Graham leant back in his
chair and laughed outright, a good, honest laugh that
cheered me immensely.

"What tickles me, Bertrand," he said, still chuckling,
"is that our friend Hornby, here, was pretty well down
to his last shilling a day or two ago. And, now, that he
gets the chance of his life, he's willing to chuck it for
the sake of some ideal of Art. How's that for a business
proposition, eh?"

"Seems to me all right, Harry," Bertrand said. "I'd ex-
pect that cottage of mine to be something — good, you
know."

"You've got him," Graham said, winking at me. "But
now, here's another proposition for you. I'm going to

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 309

build new works in Yorkshire before long. What are
your ideals about the designing of motor-shops?"

I saw those works in a flash. "The planning would have
to be done very largely by yourself," I said. "For the
rest all you want is an effect of stability and grouping,
nice, clean outlines as far as possible and the absolute
minimum of decoration. What I should try to express is
organisation and co-operation, with well-lighted, well-venti-
lated buildings — simplicity and efficiency, you know. The
thing I should try to avoid is that awful suggestion of
ostentation and pretending to be something else — a chateau
for example — that you see in the designing of so many
works of that kind. I've seen a factory with machicola-
tions, as if it were designed to stand a mediaeval siege."

"You're all right," Graham said, and I knew that I was,
indeed, all right so far as my prospects were concerned.
But there had been a moment when I had wavered ; when
I had wondered if I could face my uncle with the report
that I had offended Graham for the sake of some vague
ideal. I had given way so easily about Parkinson in the
days when I was engaged to Gladys.

"The difference between you and your friend Geddes,"
was Graham's last approving distinction, "is that you're
broad-minded and he isn't. He's dogmatic. He's only got
one idea. If he'd designed those works of mine, he'd have
tried to make 'em look like a garden suburb."

I believe Graham was right in that judgment.

I ought to have been very elated that evening.

I had so conclusively beaten Pferdminger that I could
afford to forgive him— and if he did not forgive me, he
reverted very easily to his old air of servility when he
learnt that he was again to serve me with meals. And
as an evidence of his returned docility, he went out him-

310 HOUSE-MATES

self the next morning, and diligently polished the "sign on
the post."

But the essential of my victory was that I had won
the prospect of independence on my own terms. I knew
that in future I would be able to do my own work in my
own way. And there was a fair probability that I might
presently realise an infinitesimal fraction of the ambition
I had dreamed in the Euston Road — I might take a hand
in the re-designing of London. (As a matter of fact I
have already done something in that direction, although I
am not going to catalogue my efforts here. I am not
writing this book as an advertisement.)

And yet, I was aware of loss that evening ; of some sacri-
fice that I was making in order to accept success. I real-
ised that I was no longer a true member of the community
at 73 Keppel Street; that do what I would, I must soon
lose touch with my house-mates.

We had been united, all of us, in our common struggle.
However diverse our characters or ambitions, we had
for the most part achieved sympathy; and even where
there had been hate — as in the strife between Helen and
myself — it had had a human, I think I may say an honest
quality, that had left no bitterness. Helen and I had in
a peculiar sense been equals in our fight for Judith. All
of us there in the house had been equals — with the one
exception of Mrs. Bast, who had from the first put on
airs of superiority.

And this simple realisation of essential equality with
the rest of mankind constitutes, I suppose, the change in
myself that I have insisted upon from the beginning. All
my upbringing had taught me to divide society into cate-
gories. People were judged by their position and labelled
as eligible or ineligible acquaintances; as people one ought
or ought not to know. In Keppel Street I learnt to alter
my standard of values. I learnt, before all, that there is
not such a creature as a fellow human being I ought not
to know; and that just so long as I shrank from sharing
the interests of my fellow men, so long must I remain a

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 311

mere egg; a cramped, distorted entity, bound within a
shell that permited me no true sight of life.

In retrospect I always think of 73 Keppel Street as a
"jolly" house. The epithet is Judith's who adds that they
were all such "jolly people."

XIV
THE LOOSE ENDS

A RCHITECTURE seems a very precise art when I com-
-^V pare it with story-writing. When I design a build-
ing, I come by degrees to visualise the whole of it and to
place it, mentally, in relation to its surroundings. One be-
gins with a rough plan, and from that everything springs,
until at last the visualised thing is created in the solid,
compact and whole, and varying only in minor details from
the conception one has formed in one's own mind — many
of the variations being due, unhappily, to the incompe-
tences of contractors and workmen. It is so difficult to get
away from the rigidities and limitations of the machine in
modern building.

The writing of a novel (I suppose I can call this book
a novel?) and more particularly the setting down of a
piece of autobiography, is a very different undertaking.
I began with some kind of plan in my mind, but I had to
abandon it before I reached the end of my second chap-
ter. For I intended originally to regard only one aspect
of myself, and I very soon found that if I were to confine
myself to that, I should be compelled to write an imaginary
story to fit it. The experiences of my life have not lent
themselves to throwing one aspect into a high light.

Again, the belief that I was a very ordinary example of
humanity, the belief which I clearly stated at the outset,
has been severely shaken by the introspection that has been
necessary in writing. Indeed, I have been driven to the

312

THE LOOSE ENDS 31S

conclusion that the typical in humanity is a mere abstrac-
tion. The differences between individuals are so inex-
haustible; and the points of likeness furnish so artificial a
means of classification.

But the insuperable difficulty that must confront the
writer who would give to his story the neatness and finish
of a completed work, is the consideration that life is a
succession. The account of an episode may be neatly
rounded off, and given an air of completeness; but I can
find no stopping place in the story of a life. Even death
would not, now, finish the long train of events ; for some-
thing of what I learnt in Keppel Street has already been
taught to my two children and they in turn may pass on
some version of it through unrealisable generations. While
even in the ten years that have intervened between my last
recorded episode and the present moment of writing, I could
find material for another half-dozen books if I cared to
write them.

Nevertheless, when I look back over all this heap of
manuscript, I feel that the only year of my life which I
have treated in detail, has some special significance; that
it forms the nucleus of a story to which my first three
chapters were a necessary prologue. And I know that no
other period of my life has the same significance. That is,
perhaps, some kind of justification.

But my professional habit will not permit me to leave all
the loose ends which seem to me so horribly obvious ; and
a few of them, at least, I can and will tuck in with a fair
approach to neatness. My chief trouble is to find a method
of doing the job quickly.

It seems fairly clear, in any case, that I must bring my-
self and Judith up to date.

II

Her aunt died in August, 1906— three weeks after my
reconciliation with Uncle David,— and left her another £200

314 HOUSE-MATES

a year. I went down to Cheltenham for the funeral and
made the acquaintance of the surviving sister who is still
alive and stays with, us now and again. She tolerates me,
but I am afraid that we can never be equals. She does not
approve my "principles" as she calls them. I feel her watch-
ing me with an expression of grave doubt, and know that
she is wondering how I, the son of a clergyman of the
Church of England, come to have such queer ideas about
society. She tries to find excuse for me on the grounds
that I am an artist — of a kind.

With that legacy in addition to our joint income, and
my professional prospects, there was no reason to post-
pone our marriage, and Judith and I spent the necessary five
minutes or so before a registrar in the following Septem-
ber. I had introduced her to my uncle and aunt but we
steadily opposed the suggestion of a public ceremony. Hill
and Mrs. Hargreave were our two witnesses.

We lived in a little villa in the Vale of Health for eigh-
teen months after we were married, moved into a house
at Northwood when our little boy was twelve weeks old,
and finally settled down into this place which I designed for
myself on the heights overlooking Wendover, about four
years later.

My uncle died in the winter of 1912, and left me £20,000.
I regarded that money as a superfluous responsibility at
the time, and I was planning to invest the whole of it in a
model-dwelling scheme that was occupying my attention,
when the war broke out.

That cataclysm changed everything for Judith and me.
We refer to the new period between ourselves, as the be-
ginning of the "third phase." For her life, like mine, has
been divided into recognisably distinct phases, which we
have labelled for our own convenience as the Cloister, the
World and the War.

My professional prospects temporarily vanished in Au-
gust, 1914. In any case, new building operations were post-
poned; and two of the jobs I had in hand were hung up
at that time by the building strike which seemed so im-

THE LOOSE ENDS 315

mensely important in July and so utterly negligible a month
later. But the chief cause of interference was my imme-
diate mobilisation. I had joined the territorials five years
before, and held the rank of captain, and Judith after 0
terrible struggle with herself, permitted me to volunteer
for foreign service.

I have written the word "permitted" after a long hesi-
tation, and it does, as a matter of fact, suggest the
final outcome of the three days' struggle between us; but
no single word standing thus alone in this dull, curt record
of a time so extraordinarily full of emotion, could give
any effect of Judith's submission, or of our relations to
one another through the various stages that preceded her
decision. She was so furiously opposed to the idea of
war, and although she conceded the necessity for me to
fulfil the duties I had undertaken as a territorial, she loathed
the thought of my killing a fellow-creature hardly less than
the thought of myself being killed.

But I dare not, now, enter into any report of that argu-
ment of ours ; in as much as such a diversion would entail
an account of our relations to one another — and they can-
not be explained in few words. For I believe that in some
respects our married life has been unique. Judith and I
are in many ways so independent of each other ; we have so
many separate interests and our opinions — as in this matter
of volunteering for foreign service— do not by any means
always coincide. And yet we have kept our love not only
sweet, but ardent. Our feelings for one another have deep-
ened, but otherwise they are what they were ten years ago.
Judith and I have always been, essentially, equals . . .

I was not sent abroad until the spring of 1915, and then
I went to Egypt for four months. I came back from there
in September, had ten days leave at Wendover, and then
after being five weeks in France, I lost my right foot and
four fingers of my left hand in a little affair between Auchy
and Vermelles. The wounds might not, in themselves
have been so serious, but I was left in a bad position and
nearly bled to death before help could reach me.

316 HOUSE-MATES

the deepest satisfactions of my life is the fact that the
little fellow who rescued me, received the Victoria Cross.
No face, — no, not even Judith's — was ever so welcome to
me as his. And his coolness and cleverness still seem to
me almost supernatural. We were under fire all the time,
but he saved my life by putting a tourniquet round my leg
before he attempted to move me.

I was pretty bad for two months after that affair, but I
get along famously, now, with an artificial leg — the sur-
geons were able to amputate below the knee and I go with
a scarcely perceptible limp — while my left thumb has be-
come adapted to opposing itself against the stump of my
hand. I can still do most of the things I want to do with
that hand.

I began this book last January as a means of relaxation
and forgetfulness. In five weeks — of which I spent alto-
gether nineteen days in the trenches — I had suffered ex-
periences that leave their mark for life on a man of my
disposition and habit. We were not unusually active about
my bit of the line during my time there; our lot compared
with that of the men in, say, the Somme advance, might
appear a peculiarly easy one; but my wounds and the ill-
ness that succeeded them, seemed to have enclosed the whole
experience in a ring of agony and terror. Perhaps I was
too old, — I was some months past my 38th birthday when
I went to France — or it may be that men of my tempera-
ment cannot endure the shock and threat of life in the
trenches. I hope in any case that my feelings were not typi-
cal. For I can tremble now to think of the horror of re-
luctance that might have overcome me if I had not been
incapacitated by my wounds; if I had had to go back . . .

Even now, I cannot describe my experiences to Judith,
and yet I have always been conscious that some lurking
danger awaits me if I attempt to forget too completely. I
am undoubtedly mastering my horror by degrees, and I
have had it in my mind to begin a quiet examination of
my feelings during these critical five weeks, by writing some

THE LOOSE ENDS 317

sort of account of them — not for publication. After I
have done that, I may be able to speak more freely.

But when I began this book in January, I did it in order
to forget. I was in danger of becoming insane, then, and
I found relief by plunging myself back into the past. And
I can see, — though I doubt if any one else would notice the
change unless it were pointed out, — how my gradual re-
covery has effected both my style and my method. I be-
gan with almost pure reminiscence and with a strong inclina-
tion to trace the subjective rather than the objective trend
of my life. But as I grew stronger and less nervous, I
began to take a delight in the telling of a story ; I invented
conversations to fit my memory of actual events. Some-
times I was strongly tempted to invent incidents, also ; and
I might have succumbed to that temptation if I had had
more confidence in my ability as a romancer.

One result of this recovery of mine strikes me as worth
noting, namely that while I am thankful to have re-achieved
a certain normality, I am inclined to regret the lost spirit
of my first three chapters. I know that I shall never recover
it and I could not wish to pay the penalty that alone might
re-induce the nervous sensitiveness which enabled me to
write of my more or less transcendental experiences. But
I feel that I came nearer to the underlying truth of life
when I concluded my earlier history than when I plunged
into the realistic account of my year in Keppel Street. If I
could have written that, too, subjectively, I might have
justified my claim to hatching.

HI

To return to my loose ends; Hill did not join up until
last April, and he is at the present moment (October, 1916)
in Ireland. I hope he may remain there. I believe he will.
Since the early days when we lost such men as Rupert
Brooke and Dixon Scott, there has been a recognisable dis-
position to save men whose services to literature, art and

318 HOUSE-MATES

science, cannot be replaced. Hill's name would, of course,
be known if I described his literary activities during the
past ten years; but he has asked me to say nothing that
will "place" him, and I must respect his wish.

Mrs. Hargreave is less easily disposed of. She devel-
oped a form of megalomania not long after she left Keppel
Street, and her husband, who had completely failed to find
any evidence against her that would give him grounds for
divorce, had her confined in a private asylum at Chiswick.
She was released after twelve months — she had grown very
stout in that time — and lives now on an allowance of £150
a year that her husband conceded her. She is certainly
not mad, but she is unquestionably eccentric. She still
talks sometimes of going on the stage, for example. She
took no active part in the militant movement after she came
out of the asylum, but she was and is an ardent feminist.

She stayed with us down here for a fortnight last Au-
gust, and her theory of the war seemed to be that it was an
interpolation of Providence designed to put women into
power. I am willing to agree that the enlargement of
women's energies will be one of the war's effects, but I
cannot admit that it will be either the principal result or
the only one. I feel as if there was some undefinable con-
striction in Mrs. Hargreave's mind. I believe that if she
could have shaken off that dominating resentment of hers,
her life might not have been wasted.

The same opinion is true of poor Helen. She, too, is in
effect, a monomaniac, although she has never suffered from
the mania of greatness that landed Mrs. Hargreave at Chis-
wick. Helen reverses Mrs. Hargreave's judgment. She
regards the war as an intolerable interference with the great
militant campaign which was moving in 1914 towards its
triumphant achievement. She has been doing office work
for the last two years. She had a serious nervous break-
down after her last hunger-strike, but she is a perfectly
competent secretary. She is working, now, for a well-
known woman-organiser, — she steadily refuses to take em-
ployment under any man.

THE LOOSE ENDS 319

Herz is interned. He had neglected to take out his
naturalisation papers, and applied for them, too late, when
he had received his notice to return to Germany for ser-
vice in the Landsturm. He preferred internement to the
obeying of that summons. I don't blame him.

Pferdminger had shown greater foresight. He had be-
come a British citizen many years before the war broke
out. After he left Keppel Street, he started a boarding-
house in Torrington Square and succeeded very well. I
have not seen nor heard of him since 1912, but I have no
doubt that he is surviving the loss of his German boarders.

I do not know what happened to Lippmann after he left
us; and the Meares, as I have already mentioned, never
wrote to me after their arrival in South Africa.

I have left the Basts until the end, and I find some diffi-
culty in dealing with them, because Judith and I adopted
"Oracles" ; and although I have no intention of ever letting
her read this story, I cannot avoid a feeling of distaste for
putting down the facts about her father. I picture her
accidentally getting hold of the book this manuscript may
become, recognising herself under her alias and being hor-
ribly confronted by a bald statement of the manner of her
father's death. She will probably be told the truth when
she is older, but she is a delicate, nervous girl, and I should
not like her to receive the news in that way.

Her mother married again, a moderately rich man, I be-
lieve ; but we have held no communication with her for many

years.

******

It is quite evident that my story is finished, but I am as
loath to leave my manuscript as was Gibbon when he had
finished "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." I
cannot, perhaps, speak of my book as "an old and agree-
able companion," but it has afforded me a very valuable dis-
traction from the immense pressure and menace of the
war; and I believe that it was largely instrumental in sav-
ing me, nine months ago, from melancholia. Little wonder,
then that I feel unwilling to write "The End," and put my

320 HOUSE-MATES

task on one side. And as I have said, a book of this kind
can never be finished.

Only yesterday I found new experience that was like an-
other beginning.

I had been to see a friend in Gospel Oak, a man who was
a private in my company, and has since been invalided out
of the Army.

I left his father's house, oppressed by a sense of the
narrowness of life. All that quarter is to my mind repre-
sentative of the worst of London and of our old civilisa-
tion. The slums vex me far less. There I find adventure
and zest whatever the squalor; the marks of the primitive
struggle through dirt and darkness towards release. In
such districts as Gospel Oak, I am depressed by the flat-
ness of an awful monotony. Those horrible lines of moody,
complacent streets represent not struggle, but the achieve-
ment of a worthless aspiration. The houses with their
deadly similarity, their smug false exteriors, their con-
formity to an ideal which is typified by their poor imitative
decoration, could only be inhabited by people who have no
thought nor desire for expression. And the boy I had vis-
ited confirmed me in that deduction. He had had what he
called "good news" for me. The loss of a leg had not in-
capacitated him for the office stool, and his employer was
taking him back at his old salary — with his pension he
would be, as he said, "quite well off." Eleven months in
the Army had had little effect upon him. Perhaps he was
a little coarsened and hardened by his experience, less in-
clined to respect the sacredness of life, but in other ways
he was the same youth with the same ambitions that he
had had before the break came. He talked of being able
to save, of setting up for himself a home modelled on that
of his father, who had served the same City firm for over
forty years. I could detect no sign of any reaching out to-
wards freedom in his talk ; and by freedom I mean not the
choice of occupation, but the freedom of the mind, of the
imagination. But indeed, any freedom of imagination must
be almost impossible in those surroundings. The dwellers

THE LOOSE ENDS

in such districts as those are cramped into the vice of their
environment. Their homes represent the dull concession
to a stale rule; and their lives take tone from the grey,
smoke-grimed repetition of one endlessly repeated design.
The same foolish ornamentation on every house in each
dreary slab of blank street reiterates the same suggestion.
Their places of worship, the blank chapels and pseudo-
Gothic churches, rear themselves head and shoulders above
the dull level, only to repeat the same threat of obedience
to a gloomy law. There is but one voice for all that neigh-
bourhood, and its message is as meaningless as the crepe on
a coffin. The thought of Gospel Oak and its like is the
thought of imitation, of imitation falling back and becom-
ing stereotyped, until the meaning of the thing so persis-
tently copied has been lost and forgotten.

I made my way out of it at last on to the spaces of the
Lower Heath ; and there I found great depths of cloud that
were like the openings of a door into life. Over Highgate
and the North the weak blues of the October sky thrust
forward rolling piles of cumulus in white and primrose and
dusky purples, that stood up gigantic above the little swell
of hill and wood. The whole panorama of the Heath
seemed small and composed beneath the height of those
gigantic clouds; the Earth, I thought, was no more than
some wonderful, beautiful sediment at the bottom of an
enormous bowl. As I reached the Spaniards Road, a sharp
shower drove suddenly out of the South- West, and for a
few minutes the promise and contrast of the sky were
blotted out in swirls of lowering grey. Then I saw that the
horizon was slashed with a yellow band, and presently the
curtain of rain was rolled up to discover the deeps of clear
sky filmed here and there with drifting scarves of white.
And with the return of the sun, the distances were wrapped
in that wonderful veil of atmosphere which sometimes trans-
figures the Heath, an almost palpable atmosphere that is
like thin, clear smoke; that is like the bloom on a Septem-
ber plum. The nearer trees in their dark greens and browns
and scorched yellows melted back across the valley into

HOUSE-MATES

lavender grey, and then into a sweet warm blue; and yet
the depth of the picture right back over the Middlesex Hills
had the appearance of being an effect rather than the pre-
sentation of true distance — I had a sense that all this beauty
of line and mass and colour was in some way composed, as
if I myself had created something more Wonderful than
any haphazard view of natural landscape could ever be.

And it may be that the thrill and elation of that feeling
made me more susceptible to emotion, when, at last, and
reluctantly, I descended from my point of vantage and
made my way alone one of the raw brown paths that wind
among the silver birches and lead out to the Heath Exten-
sion. I know that when I came in sight of the Garden
Suburb, grouped about its two churches, I was ready to
shout with joy, as if I hailed some great achievement. It
seemed to me, then, that these open roads and graceful
houses were so infinitely more beautiful than the dying
miseries of Gospel Oak. In another mood I might have
been critical, but then I rejoiced as if I saluted a new age —
an age of hope and aspiration and individuality. . . .

And surely we are moving towards that ; towards a recog-
nition of the universal claim to beauty and imagination.
Ahead of us lies only too clearly another, and possibly a
greater phase of strife. I know that when this war is over,
we shall have to face the immense conflict between capital
and labour; between the aristocracy and the dispossessed,
separated as they are by that dull immobile crowd that we
speak of as the Middle-Classes. And I know that it is a
conflict that will come all the sooner if we should be blessed
by a fruitful unarmed peace. But that struggle is inevitable
and in a sense I do not deplore its necessity. It will not be
wasteful, but constructive. This contrast of Gospel Oak
and the comparatively free suburb cannot be endured much
longer. And if we can only find release from all the oppres-
sions of conformity and ugliness by revolution, then revolu-
tion may be a blessed thing.

THE END

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